Part 21

But his old misfortunes pursued him. He had indeed no colleagues to quarrel with, but his avowed publications became every day more obnoxious--and when any of his anonymous pieces had a great run, he could not stifle his vanity and conceal the author's name. Of these pieces, some were even shocking to decency. It was indifferent to him whether it was friend or foe that he abused; and some of them were so horribly injurious to the characters of the most respectable men in the state, that he was continually under the correction of the courts of justice. There was hardly a man of letters that had ever been in his company who did not suffer by it. For his constant practice was to father every new step that he took towards Atheism on some other person; and, whenever the reader sees, in the beginning of a book, any person celebrated by the author for sound sense, profound judgment, accurate reasoning, or praised for acts of friendship and kindness to himself, he may be assured that, before the close of the book, this man will convince Dr. Bahrdt in some private conversation, that some doctrine, cherished and venerated by all Christians, is a piece of knavish superstition. So lost was Dr. Bahrdt to all sense of shame. He said that he held his own opinions independent of all mankind, and was indifferent about their praise or their reproach.

Bahrdt's licentious, very licentious life, was the cause of most of these enormities. No income could suffice and he wrote for bread. The artful manner in which the literary manufacture of Germany was conducted, made it impossible to hinder the rapid dispersion of his writings over all Germany; and the indelicate and coarse maw of the public was as ravenous as the sensuality of Dr. Bahrdt, who really battened in the Epicurean sty. The consequence of all this was that he was obliged to fly from Heidesheim, leaving his sureties in the _Philanthropine_ to pay about 14,000 dahlers, besides debts without number to his friends. He was imprisoned at Dienheim, but was released I know not how, and settled at Halle. There he sunk to be a keeper of a tavern and billiard-table, and his house became the resort and the bane of the students in the University.--He was obliged therefore to leave the city. He had somehow got funds which enabled him to buy a little vineyard, prettily situated in the neighbourhood. This he fitted up with every accommodation that could invite the students, and called it _Bahrdt's Ruhe_. We have already seen the occupations of Dr. B. in this _Buen Retiro_--Can we call it _otium cum dignitate_? Alas, no! He had not lived two years here, bustling and toiling for the German Union, sometimes without a bit of bread--when he was sent to prison at Halle, and then to Magdeburg, where he was more than a year in jail. He was set at liberty, and returned to _Bahrdt's Ruhe_, not, alas, to live at ease, but to lie down on a sick-bed, where, after more than a year's suffering increasing pain, he died on the 23d of April 1793, the most wretched and loathsome victim of unbridled sensuality. The account of his case is written by a friend, a Dr. Jung, who professes to defend his memory and his principles. The medical description melted my heart, and I am certain would make his bitterest enemy weep. Jung repeatedly says, that the case was not venereal--calls it the vineyard disease--the quicksilver disease, (he was dying of an unconquerable salivation,) and yet, through the whole of his narration, relates symptoms and sufferings, which, as a medical man, he could not possibly mean to be taken in any other sense than as effects of pox. He meant to please the enemies of poor Bahrdt, knowing that such a man could have no friends, and being himself ignorant of what friendship or goodness is. The fate of this poor creature affected me more than any thing I have read of a great while. All his open enemies put together have not said so much ill of him as his trusted friend Pott, and another confident, whose name I cannot recollect, who published in his lifetime an anonymous book called _Bahrdt with the Iron Brow_--and this fellow Jung, under the absurd mask of friendship, exhibited the loathsome carcase for a florin, like a malefactor's at Surgeon's Hall. Such were the fruits of the German Union, of that Illumination that was to refine the heart of man, and bring to maturity the seeds of native virtue, which are choaked in the hearts of other men by superstition and despotism. We see nothing but mutual treachery and base desertion.

I do not concern myself with the gradual perversion of Dr. Bahrdt's moral and religious opinions. But he affected to be the enlightener and reformer of mankind; and affirmed that all the mischiefs in life originated from despotism supported by superstition. "In vain," says he, "do we complain of the inefficacy of religion. All positive religion is founded on injustice. No Prince has a right to prescribe or sanction any such system. Nor would he do it, were not the priests the firmest pillars of his tyranny, and superstition the strongest fetters for his subjects. He dares not show Religion as she is--pure and undefiled----She would charm the eyes and the hearts of mankind, would immediately produce true morality, would open the eyes of freeborn man, would teach him what are his rights, and who are his oppressors, and Princes would vanish from the face of the earth."

Therefore, without troubling ourselves with the truth or falsehood of his religion of Nature, and assuming it as an indisputable point, that Dr. Bahrdt has seen it in this natural and so effective purity, it is surely a very pertinent question, "Whether has the sight produced on his mind an effect so far superior to the acknowledged faintness of the impression of Christianity on the bulk of mankind, that it will be prudent to adopt the plan of the German Union, and at once put an end to the divisions which so unfortunately alienate the minds of professing Christians from each other?" The account here given of Dr. Bahrdt's life seems to decide the question.

But it will be said, that I have only related so many instances of the quarrels of Priests and their slavish adherents, with Dr. Bahrdt. Let us view him in his ordinary conduct, not as the champion and martyr of Illumination, but as an ordinary citizen, a husband, a father, a friend, a teacher of youth, a clergyman.

When Dr. Bahrdt was a parish-minister, and president of some inferior ecclesiastical district, he was empowered to take off the censures of the church from a young woman who had born a bastard child. By violence he again reduced her to the same condition, and escaped censure, by the poor girl's dying of a fever before her pregnancy was far advanced, or even legally documented. Also, on the night of the solemn farce of consecrating his Philanthropine, he debauched the maid-servant, who bore twins, and gave him up for the father. The thing, I presume, was not judicially proved, otherwise he would have surely been disgraced; but it was afterwards made evident, by the letters which were found by Pott, when he undertook to write his life. A series of these letters had passed between him and one Graf, a steward, who was employed by him to give the woman the small pittance by which she and the infants were maintained. Remonstrances were made when the money was not advanced; and there are particularly letters about the end of 1779, which show that Bahrdt had ceased giving any thing. On the ** of February 1780, the infants (three years old) were taken away in the night, and were found exposed, the one at Usstein, and the other at Worms, many miles distant from each other, and almost frozen to death. The first was discovered by its moans, by a shoemaker in a field by the road-side, about six in the morning; the other was found by two girls between the hedges in a lane, set between two great stones, past all crying. The poor mother travelled up and down the country in quest of her infants, and hearing these accounts, found them both, and took one of them home; but not being able to maintain both, when Bahrdt's commissioner refused contributing any more, it remained with the good woman who had taken it in[17].

[17] This is worse than Rousseau's conduct, who only sent his children to the Foundling hospital, that he might never know them again. (See his Confessions.)

Bahrdt was married in 1772, while at Giessen; but after wasting the greatest part of his wife's little fortune left her by a former husband, he was provoked by losing 1000 florins (about 110l.) in the hands of her brother who would not pay it up. After this he used her very ill, and speaks very contemptuously of her in his own account of his life, calling her a dowdy, jealous, and every thing contemptible. In two infamous novels, he exhibits characters, in which she is represented in a most cruel manner; yet this woman (perhaps during the honey-moon) was enticed by him one day into the bath, in the pond of the garden of the Philanthropine at Heidesheim, and there, in the sight of all the pupils did he (also undressed) toy with his naked wife in the water. When at Halle, he used the poor woman extremely ill, keeping a mistress in the house, and giving her the whole command of the family, while the wife and daughter were confined to a separate part of it. When in prison at Magdeburgh, the strumpet lived with him, and bore him two children. He brought them all to his house when he was at liberty. Such barbarous usage made the poor woman at last leave him and live with her brother. The daughter died about a year before him, of an overdose of laudanum given by her father, to procure sleep, when ill of a fever. He ended his own wretched life in the same manner, unable, poor man, to bear his distress, without the smallest compunction or sorrow for his conduct; and the last thing he did was to send for a bookseller, (Vipink of Halle, who had published some of his vile pieces,) and recommend his strumpet and her children to his protection, without one thought of his injured wife.

I shall end my account of this profligate monster with a specimen of his way of using his friends.

"Of all the acquisitions which I made in England, Mr. ---- (the name appears at full length) was the most important. This person was accomplished in the highest degree. With sound judgment, great genius, and correct taste, he was perfectly a man of the world. He was my friend, and the only person who warmly interested himself for my institution. To his warm and repeated recommendations I owe all the pupils I got in England, and many most respectable connections; for he was universally esteemed as a man of learning and of the most unblemished worth. He was my friend, my conductor, and I may say my preserver; for when I had not bread for two days, he took me to his house, and supplied all my wants. This gentleman was a clergyman, and had a small but genteel and selected congregation, a flock which required strong food. My friend preached to them pure natural religion, and was beloved by them. His sermons were excellent, and delivered with native energy and grace, because they came from the heart. I had once the honour of preaching for him. But what a difference--I found myself afraid--I feared to speak too boldly, because I did not know where I was, and thought myself speaking to my crouching countrymen. But the liberty of England opens every heart, and makes it accessible to morality. I can give a very remarkable instance.

"The women of the town in London do not, to be sure, meet with my unqualified approbation in all respects. But it is impossible not to be struck with the propriety and decency of their manners, so unlike the clownish impudence of our German wh--. I could not distinguish them from modest women, otherwise than by their greater attention and eagerness to shew me civility. My friend used to laugh at my mistakes, and I could not believe him when he told me that the lady who had kindly shewed the way to me, a foreigner, was a votary of Venus. He maintained that English liberty naturally produced morality and kindness. I still doubted, and he said that he would convince me by my own experience. These girls are to be seen in crowds every evening in every quarter of the town. Although some of them may not have even a shift, they come out in the evening dressed like princesses, in hired clothes, which are entrusted to them without any fear of their making off with them. Their fine shape, their beautiful skin, and dark brown hair, their bosoms, so prettily set off by their black silk dress, and above all, the gentle sweetness of their manners, makes an impression in the highest degree favourable to them. They civilly offer their arm and say, "My dear, will you give me a glass of wine." If you give them no encouragement, they pass on, and give no farther trouble. I went with my friend to Covent Garden, and after admiring the innumerable beauties we saw in the piazzas, we gave our arm to three very agreeable girls, and immediately turned into a temple of the Cytherean Goddess, which is to be found at every second door in the city, and were shewn into a parlour elegantly carpeted and furnished, and lighted with wax, with every other accommodation at hand.--My friend called for a pint of wine, and this was all the expence for which we received so much civility. The conversation and other behaviour of the ladies was agreeable in the highest degree, and _not a word_ passed that would have distinguished them from nuns, or that was not in the highest degree mannerly and elegant. We parted in the street--and such is the liberty of England, that my friend ran not the smallest risk of suffering either in his honour or usefulness.--Such is the effect of freedom."

We may be sure, the poor man was astonished when he saw his name before the public as one of the enlighteners of Christian Europe. He is really a man of worth, and of the most irreproachable character, and knew that whatever might be the protection of British liberty, such conduct would ruin him with his own hearers, and in the minds of all his respectable countrymen. He therefore sent a vindication of his character from this slanderous abuse to the publishers of the principal newspapers and literary journals in Germany. The vindication is complete, and B. is convicted of having related what he _could not possibly have seen_. It is worthy of remark, that the vindication did not appear in the _Berlin Monatschrift_, nor in any of the journals which made favorable mention of the performances of the Enlighteners.

"Think not, indignant reader," says Arbuthnot, "that this man's life is useless to mortals." It shews in a strong light the falsity of all his declamations in favour of his so much praised natural religion and universal kindness and humanity. No man of the party writes with more persuasive energy, and, though his petulance and precipitant self-conceit lead him frequently astray, no man has occasionally put all the arguments of these philosophers in a clearer light; yet we see that all is false and hollow. He is a vile hypocrite, and the real aim of all his writings is to make money, by fostering the sensual propensities of human nature, although he sees and feels that the completion of the plan of the German Union would be an event more destructive and lamentable than any that can be pointed out in the annals of superstition. I will not say that all partisans of Illumination are hogs of the sty of Epicurus like this wretch. But the reader must acknowledge that, in the institution of Weishaupt, there is the same train of sensual indulgence laid along the whole, and that purity of heart and life is no part of the morality that is held forth as the perfection of human nature. The final abolition of Christianity is undoubtedly one of its objects--whether as an end of their efforts, or as a mean for the attainment of some end still more important. Purity of heart is perhaps the most distinctive feature of Christian morality. Of this Dr. Bahrdt seems to have had no conception; and his institution, as well as his writings, shew him to have been a very coarse sensualist. But his taste, though coarse, accorded with what Weishaupt considered as a ruling propensity, by which he had the best chance of securing the fidelity of his subjects.--Craving desires, beyond the bonds of our means, were the natural consequences of indulgence; and since the purity of Christian morality stood in his way, his first care was to clear the road by rooting it out altogether--What can follow but general dissoluteness of manners?

Nothing can more distinctly prove the crooked politics of the Reformers than this. It may be considered as the main-spring of their whole machine. Their pupils were to be led by means of their sensual appetites, and the aim of their conductors was not to inform them, but merely to lead them; not to reform, but to rule the world.--They would reign, though in hell, rather than serve in heaven.--Dr. Bahrdt was a true Apostle of Illuminatism; and though his torch was made of the grossest materials, and "served only to discover sights of woe," the horrid glare darted into every corner, rousing hundreds of filthy vermin, and directing their flight to the rotten carrion where they could best deposit their poison and their eggs; in the breasts, to wit, of the sensual and profligate, there to fester and burst forth in a new and filthy progeny; and it is astonishing what numbers were thus roused into action. The scheme of Reading Societies had taken prodigiously, and became a very profitable part of the literary trade of Germany. The booksellers and writers soon perceived its importance, and acted in concert.

I might fill a volume with extracts from the criticisms which were published on the _Religion Edict_ so often mentioned already. The Leipzig catalogue for one year contained 173. Although it concerned the Prussian States alone, these appeared in every corner of Germany; nay, also in Holland, in Flanders, in Hungary, in Switzerland, in Courland, and in Livonia. This shows it to have been the operation of an Associated Band, as was intimated to the King, with so much petulance by Mirabeau. There was (past all doubt) such a combination among the innumerable scribblers who supplied the fairs of Leipzig and Frankfort. Mirabeau calls it a _Conjuration des Philosophes_, an expression very clear to himself, for the myriads of gareteers who have long fed the craving mouth of Paris (always thirsting after some "new thing") called themselves philosophers, and, like the gangs of St. Giles's, conversed with each other in a cant of their own, full of _morale_, of _energie_, of _bienvillance_, &c. &c. &c. unintelligible or misunderstood by other men, and used for the purpose of deceit. While Mirabeau lived too, they formed a _Conjuration_. The 14th of July 1790, the most solemn invocation of the Divine presence ever made on the face of this earth, put an end to the propriety of this appellation; for it became necessary (in the progress of political Illumination) to declare that oaths were nonsense, because the invoked was a creature of the imagination, and the grand federation, like Wieshaupt and Bahrdt's Masonic Christianity, is declared, to those initiated into the higher mysteries, to be a lie. But if we have no longer a _Conjuration des Philosophes_, we have a gang of scribblers that has got possession of the public mind by their management of the literary Journals of Germany, and have made licentious sentiments in politics, in morals, and in religion, as familiar as were formerly the articles of ordinary news. All the sceptical writings of England put together will not make half the number that have appeared in Protestant Germany during the last twelve or fifteen years. And, in the Criticisms on the Edict, it is hard to say whether infidelity or disloyalty fills the most pages.

To such a degree had the Illuminati carried this favourite and important point that they obtained the direction even of those whose office it was to prevent it. There is at Vienna, as at Berlin, an office for examining and licensing writings before they can have their course in the market. This office publishes annually an index of forbidden books. In this index are included the account of the last _Operations of Spartacus and Philo in the Order of Illuminati_, and a dissertation on _The Final Overthrow of Free Masonry_, a most excellent performance, showing the gradual corruption and final perversion of that society to a seminary of sedition. Also the Vienna _Magazine of Literature and Arts_, which contains many accounts of the interferences of the Illuminati in the disturbances of Europe. The Censor who occasioned this prohibition was an _Illuminatus_ named _Retzer_. He makes a most pitiful and Jesuitical defence, showing himself completely versant in all the chicane of the _Illuminati_, and devoted to their Infidel principles. (See _Rel. Begebenh._ 1795, p. 493.)

There are two performances which give us much information respecting the state of moral and political opinions in Germany about this time. One of them is called, _Proofs of a hidden Combination to destroy the Freedom of Thought and Writing in Germany_. These proofs are general, taken from many concurring circumstances in the condition of German literature. They are convincing to a thinking mind, but are too abstracted to be very impressive on ordinary readers. The other is the _Appeal to my Country_, which I mentioned in page 84. This is much more striking, and in each branch of literature, gives a progressive account of the changes of sentiment, all supported by the evidence of the books themselves. The author puts it past contradiction, that in every species of literary composition into which it was possible, without palpable absurdity, to introduce licentious and seditious principles, it was done. Many romances, novels, journeys through Germany and other countries[18], are written on purpose to attach praise or reproach to certain sentiments, characters, and pieces of conduct. The Prince, the nobleman, is made despotic, oppressive, unfeeling or ridiculous--the poor, and the man of talents, are unfortunate and neglected--and here and there a fictitious Graff or Baron is made a divinity, by philanthropy expressed in romantic charity and kindness, or ostentatious indifference for the little honours which are so precious in the eyes of a German.--In short, the system of Weishaupt and Knigge is carried into vigorous effect over all. In both these performances, and indeed in a vast number of other pieces, I see that the influence of Nicholai is much commented on, and considered as having had the chief hand in all those innovations.

[18] A plan adopted within these few years in our own country, which, if prosecuted with the same industry with which it has been begun, will soon render our circulating Libraries so many Nurseries of Sedition and Impiety. (See Travels into Germany by Este.)