Some notion of the effect that was produced is given by Herder's
preface to the second edition of his dialogues on Spinoza's system,
published in 1800. It is there said that the edition might have
been ready several years earlier, but was delayed for various
reasons. In particular, Spinoza had become so popular (being
taken up by some even with extravagance) that an unpretending
attempt to remove the common misapprehensions about him
seemed to have lost its point.
Since 1787, when these dialogues were first printed, much had
been changed in the philosophical outlook of Germany. The name
of Spinoza, which used to be mentioned with a shudder of abhorrence,
had since then risen so high with some persons that they could never
name it except for the disparagement of Leibnitz and other excellent
authors.
We may take it, then, that some ten or twelve years after
Lessing's death the tone of educated German society with regard
to Spinoza had undergone a complete change. Herder's dialogues
themselves give a version of Spinoza's doctrine, or rather of what
it might have been, which may be described as a sort of idealized
naturalism. Their general aim is curiously like that of some
writers of our own day who, accepting the theory of evolution as
estabHshed by science, but not content with its purely scientific
aspect, have endeavoured to make it the vehicle of new and refined
forms of teleology. Some of Herder's points and phrases might
still be found suggestive.^ The general tendency of his reading
of Spinoza is thus opposed to Jacobi's, and not unlike that which
has on the whole prevailed among later German critics. An
undercurrent of anti-Kantian polemic is traceable in many parts
of the dialogues.
