Lecture XII

It is remarkable how Lessing's life gives one the impression of a continual search. He himself brought this characteristic of his spiritual nature to expression when he uttered the famous saying, which has been quoted again and again (quoted, however, with very little understanding, by people who have no particular desire to strive after anything at all): “If God held in his right hand the whole full Truth, and in his left the everlasting striving after Truth, I would fall down before Him and say, ‘Father, give me what thou hast in thy left hand’.” A Lessing could say that. But when a mere pedant says it after him, it is of course intolerable. Lessing's whole life was indeed a search, an intense search. This comes to expression again and again in his works, and if we were honest with ourselves we should have to admit that many of Lessing's utterances are clumsy on this account, precisely those that are the most full of genius. People do not dare to admit that they stumble over them, because in history and literature Lessing is accounted a great man. In truth, however, his sayings often trip one up, so to speak; or, rather, they give one a feeling of being stabbed. You must, of course, become acquainted with Lessing himself to understand this. If you take up the book by Erich Schmidt, the two volumes on Lessing, then even when Erich Schmidt quotes him word for word you will not feel as though his utterances impaled you. Not at all! They may be the utterances of Lessing as far as the sound of the words goes, but what is written in the book before and after them takes away their edge.