Reflections on Lessing's Fragments

either be unconvinced of the truth of your writings, or you must be ashamed to have brought such monstrosities Mißgeburten: literally "miscarriages" or "monstrous births"; here used to describe deformed or unnatural intellectual products. of human wit into the world, and to have so disgraced yourselves that your names are not worthy of being spoken by your fellow men. Your conscience convinces you that you are greater visionaries Phantasten: a derogatory term for those who follow delusions or irrational "fancies" rather than sober reason. and fanatics than those whom your imagination has turned into visionaries and fanatics.

It is thus perhaps a very great audacity original: "Verwegenheit." on my part that I undertake to attack and refute the writings of such men, one of whom has shone upon the horizon of scholars original: "Gelehrten." as a star of the first magnitude A reference to Lessing’s immense reputation in the German Enlightenment., and whose published writings upon