Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/117

Rh the most part, showed themselves indignant; for everyone thought he could play the superior to him, though no one could equal him. A public which only hears the judgment of old men becomes overwise too soon, and nothing is more unsatisfactory than a mature judgment adopted by an immature mind.

To us youths, before whom, with our German love of truth and nature, honesty toward both ourselves and others hovered as the best guide, both in life and learning, the factious dishonesty of Voltaire and the perversion of so many worthy subjects became more and more annoying; and we daily strengthened ourselves in our aversion from him. He could never cease degrading religion and the sacred books, for the sake of injuring priestcraft, as they called it, and had thus produced in me many an unpleasant sensation. But when I now learned, that, to weaken the tradition of a deluge, he had denied all petrified shells, and only admitted them as lusus naturæ, he entirely lost my confidence; for my own eyes had, on the Baschberg, plainly enough shown me that I stood on the bottom of an old dried-up sea, among the exuviæ of its original inhabitants. These mountains had certainly been once covered by waves, whether before or during the deluge did not concern me: it was enough that the valley of the Rhine had been a monstrous lake, a bay extending beyond the reach of the eyesight; out of this I was not to be talked. I thought much more of advancing in the knowledge of lands and mountains, let what would be the result.

French literature, then, had grown old and genteel in itself, and through Voltaire. Let us devote some further consideration to this remarkable man.