# - Mendelssohn, Moses.

a translation of sections I-V (to the end of paragraph two) of Part I of Shaftesbury's essay, with autograph title ("Versuch über die Freyheit des Witzes und der Laune") and autograph section headings ("Erster Theil Erster Abschnitt...Fünfter Abschnitt"), a working manuscript, closely written in brown ink, containing a great number of revisions, corrections and cancellations, some of the latter quite extensive, with many corrections entered in the margins, in which the author extolls the role that humour plays in exposing as weak arguments shrouded in elegant or high-flown sophistry, concluding that ridicule is the only real test of gravity



...Denn was nur in einem gewissen Lichte gezeigt werden kan, ist verdächtig. Es ist ausgemacht, daß die Wahrheit alle Arten von Licht vertragen kan, und eines von diesen Lichtern, oder natürlichen Sehungsmitteln, durch welche wir zu  einer vollständigen Kenntnis der Dinge gelangen, ist unstreitig eben dieses Lächerliche selbst, oder die Probe, durch welche wir unterscheiden, was in einem jeden Gegenstande belachenswürdig ist. Jedermann, der sich nur jemals auf diesen Probierstein berufen hat, muss uns dieses eingestehen. Die ernsthaftesten Leute pflegen sich in den allerwichtigsten Angelegenheiten auf den Ausspruch dieses Richters zu berufen, und also haben sie kein Recht, andern die Freyheit zu versagen, die sie sich selbst erlauben. Der Gegenstand der Untersuchung mag noch so ernsthaft seyn; so werfen sie ohne Bedenken die Frage auf: Ist dieses nicht lächerlich?...In einer vernünftigen Untersuchung kan durch Fragen und Antworten in einer oder zwo Minuten mehr ausgerichtet werden, als durch anhaltende, stundenlange Discurse. Reden sind blos geschikt Leidenschaften zu erregen, und die Deklamation wird all Zeit mehr Kraft äussern, zu erschrecken, erheben, entzüken oder erg[ö]tzen, als die Wissbegierde zu befriedigen oder zu unterrichten. Eine freye gegenseitige Ueberlegung ist ein gepflegterer Kampf. Jeder andere Weise ist, in Vergleichung mit diser, ein blosses Säbelschwenken, Streiche in die Luft. Sollen wir in einer Conferenz, wie gefesselt da sitzen, und genöthigt seyn, über gewisse Materien predigen zu hören; so müssten wir es zuletzt nothwendig überdrüssig werden...Man sollte es sich kaum vorstellen, wie vortheilhaft es für den Leser ist, wenn er sich mit seinem Schriftsteller messen kan, wenn diser bereit ist, mit ihm auf ofner Bühne zu erscheinen, und seinen tragischen Anzug mit gemeinern und natürlichen Kleidungen zu vertauschen. Ton und Grimasse helfen sehr zum Betruge. Manches sophistische Werk hat das strengste Richterauge hintergangen, und würde in einer gelindern Probe so gut nicht ausgehalten haben. Ein alter Weltweiser...hat schon behauptet, "man müsse Ernst durch Scherz, und Scherz durch Ernst prüfen. Ein Gegenstand, der keinen Scherz vertragen kan, ist verdächtig, und ein Scherz, der keine ernsthafte Untersuchung aushalten kan, ist unstreitig falscher Witz" [(Shaftesbury:) For that which can be shewn only in a certain Light, is questionable. Truth, 'tis suppos'd, may bear all Lights: and one of those principal Lights or natural Mediums, by which Things are to be view'd, in order to a thorow Recognition, is Ridicule it-self, or that Manner of proof by which we discern whatever is liable to just Raillery in any Subject...In matter of Reason, more is done in a minute or two, by way of Question and Reply, than by a continu'd Discourse of whole Hours. Orations are fit only to move the Passions: and the Power of Declamation is to terrify, exalt, ravish, or delight, rather than satisfy or instruct. A free Conference is a close Fight....And many a formal Piece of Sophistry holds proof under a severe brow, which wou'd not pass under an easy one. 'Twas the Saying of an antient Sage, "That Humour was the only Test of Gravity; and Gravity, of Humour. For a Subject which wou'd not bear Raillery, was suspicious; and a jest which wou'd not bear a serious Examination, was certainly false Wit."]



16 pages (on 4 separate bifolia), c.214 x 172mm., no place or date [probably mid September 1761 to summer 1762], unbound, light browning to first page, central horizontal crease and light creasing to leading edge of first leaf, a few tiny stains

From the Mendelssohn family by descent

Moses Mendelssohn. Gesammelte Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe: V/2, prepared by Eva J. Engel (1991), pp.xlv-xlviii;  VI/2, prepared by Eva J. Engel (1981), pp.213-223 and 346-354; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2006)

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this is an extraordinary working manuscript by one of the central figures of the german enlightenment.

it is by far the most significant manuscript of any kind by moses mendelssohn to appear at auction in recent times.

The writings of the great eighteenth-century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) exerted considerable influence on German cultural life not only in his own century but also in the nineteenth, through such works as the Philosophische Gespräche (1755), Philosophische Schriften (1761), Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (1767) and Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum (1783). The grandfather of a celebrated nineteenth-century musician, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, he also famously influenced the thoughts, at one critical moment at least, of a great eighteenth-century one - Mozart, whose last letter to his dying father Leopold includes comforting words concerning life and death evidently taken from Phädon (a copy of which was in the composer's Nachlass).

A formative event in Mendelssohn's life was his encounter at about the age of twenty-five, through his friend the writer Gotthold Lessing, of the work of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), one of the most important philosphers of his day, who greatly influenced eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and continental discussions of aesthetics, morality and religion. Although nothing came of an early plan to translate all the works of Shaftesbury, posterity was left, fortunately, with the impressive manuscript torso of Mendelssohn's translation of the English philosopher's Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour. In a Letter to a Friend (London, 1709), a work in which Shaftesbury defended the use of humour, ridicule and common sense as a means of testing truth. (Mendelssohn's source was not the 1709 publication but the text as it appeared in the 1737 edition of the Characteristicks of Men: Manners, Opinions, Times (first published in 1711), pp.59-74.) The probable dating of the manuscript to between the middle of September 1761 and the summer of 1762 is confirmed by Mendelssohn's correspondence from this period with the writers Thomas Abbt, Lessing and C.F. Nicolai.

The care which Mendelssohn lavished on the translation and, indeed, the difficulty he experience in rendering the Earl's somewhat stilted prose in to his own elegant German, is evident on every page of the manuscript, especially in the long fourth section, which contains a number of extensive cancellations and corrections. These deleted first thoughts of Mendelssohn's, and those elsewhere, it should be noted, are not transcribed in the collected edition of Mendelssohn's works, the Jubiläumsausgabe. By no means the least important aspect of the manuscript lies in its potential as a source for a greater understanding of Mendelssohn's contribution to the history of the German language.   

Only one further autograph source for Mendelssohn's Shaftesbury translation is known: a manuscript in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, which comprises two double leaves (with gathering numbers VII and VIII) and contains a translation of part of section one, all of section two and part of section three of Part II of Shaftesbury's essay (pp.90-97 of the 1737 printed text).