![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
An excerpt from my translation-in-progress of Johann Baptist Krebs' Der Freimaurer [The Freemason (1844)]:
The idea of a continuous growth and progress of human nature is as an idea the most sublime thing which human fantasy has been able to dream up and which the understanding can imagine; the matter itself, however, is a far greater dogma than the ether-winged Adam of the Theosophers and Pietists. No species of all the products of nature delivers the slightest proof of the possibility for such a propaganda. The human alone wants in proud arrogance to know that his species, originating as a sort of animal, is developing into a seeming divinity.
[…]
I ask where such a justness is if we assume our forefathers to be dependent children, us to be youths, and only our descendants after several thousand years to be men and in the state of maturity? If we then look further past the prime of man and see a senility in which humanity sinks down again to weakness and finally death?”
[Response:] Humanity cannot die anymore; it will continue to grow and cultivate itself always.
[Rejoinder:] And how far or how high does it climb in the end? Perhaps until it itself becomes God or at least to an ether-winged species, where it penetrates to the centre of the earth and then again circles around the world system in the flight of thought? Anyone who places the beginning too high goes astray. Anyone who assumes an eternity of growth deceives themselves twice over, because you do not find there any stopping anymore where a rational standstill is demanded. This is the outlook if we see history as a doctrine which should serve as the guide to climbing ever higher. We must find the truth within ourselves, all other paths lead to errors whose entire worth consists in being able to quarrel over them.
[…]
I ask where such a justness is if we assume our forefathers to be dependent children, us to be youths, and only our descendants after several thousand years to be men and in the state of maturity? If we then look further past the prime of man and see a senility in which humanity sinks down again to weakness and finally death?”
[Response:] Humanity cannot die anymore; it will continue to grow and cultivate itself always.
[Rejoinder:] And how far or how high does it climb in the end? Perhaps until it itself becomes God or at least to an ether-winged species, where it penetrates to the centre of the earth and then again circles around the world system in the flight of thought? Anyone who places the beginning too high goes astray. Anyone who assumes an eternity of growth deceives themselves twice over, because you do not find there any stopping anymore where a rational standstill is demanded. This is the outlook if we see history as a doctrine which should serve as the guide to climbing ever higher. We must find the truth within ourselves, all other paths lead to errors whose entire worth consists in being able to quarrel over them.
Tags: