Preface.

VI

...delusions, mere nerve spasms original: "Nervenkrämpfe"; in 18th-century thought, this refers to the idea that thoughts are merely mechanical or physical reactions of the body rather than products of a soul, no fundamental laws of thought, no basic truths from which I can deduce new truths. How do matters stand now regarding the duration referring to the immortality or persistence of the soul after death of my soul? Am I perhaps myself merely a phenomenon? Thus he wavers anxiously over terrifying abysses of agonizing doubts of death and life to the left and to the right, like a reed that the wind bends now to this side, now to that, threatening to break it at any moment. Thus I too wavered in mortal fears, and nothing could protect me from the fall but God by means of my reason. At least I believe I know for certain that I now stand firm. Should I still waver, still err, I ask for kind and thorough instruction; for I seek only truth, because without it I cannot be happy.

Readers of the second class will also find in my book no poison, but rather healing medicines for their sick insights, if they read it with deliberation and with a love for the truth. Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), the French Enlightenment philosopher famous for his wit and attacks on organized religion has made them into mockers of old traditions and doctrines: here they find no mockery, but rather serious searching for truth; at the very least, they must not take those passages that perhaps sound harsh or mocking in a mocking sense. It is not at all necessary to mock the artificial weaving of the old prophetic and mystery-philosophy, but merely to investigate from where the material for it was taken, and how it was woven together. Voltaire has made them mockers of immortality: