Lessing's Education of the Human Race - Couverture rigide

Lessing stractate. The Education of the Human Race, is an aocount of how the world received and is still receiving revelation that is to prepare man for the attainment of the best that is in him. This involves the notion of a racial education and a conception of the inter-dependence of all social phenomena the unity of man with nature and the correlation of moral and political theory. I deas of this import had engaged the minds of thinkers from the time of Plato, but found more or less imperfect expression until the time of Kant and of Comte, the founder of sociology. The eighteenth century, spurred by the impetus of the Reformation and the scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century, became engrossed with the revelation of the power and destiny of man. The feeling that man was not an accident but the necessary complement of an otherwise incomplete system, gave an added force to the validity of mans ideas. Champions of deistic thought sprang up everywhere: in France, in England, in Germany. But England, owing to the philosophy of Locke, which led to religious doubt and abnegation, proved the most prolific source of deism. The common sense of Locke led toT olands Christianity not Mysterious, Tindal sC hristianity as old as the Creation, Voltaire sL ettres Philosophiques, and a host of other French andE nglish followers. The arguments of both theE nglish and the French defendants were soon echoing in Germany and found as ardent supporters there. It must not be supposed that these deists had much in common besides a fundamental theory that whatever is, is right. They bandied certain stock arguments, such as the absence of an exclusive heaven for believers, which are still heard to-day, and dogmatized and reviled very much in the manner of preceding Christians. William Law, the mystic, derided rationalism; while Tindal proclaimed that the very attempt to d
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)