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Hamann address his first dedication to his Socratic Memorabilia "To the Public, or, Nobody, the Well-Known." The dedication begins with a concatenation of biblical polemics against idols:
"You bear a name and need no proof of your existence, you find faith and do no miracles to earn it, you get honor and have neither concept nor feeling thereof. We know that there is no idol in the world. Neither are you human, yet you must be a human image which superstition has made a god. You lack nor eyes nor ears, which nonetheless do not see, do not year; and the artificial eye you form, the artificial ear you plant, is like your own, blind and deaf. . . .
"You must know everything, and you learn nothing; you must judge everything, and you understand nothing, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth; you are talking, or you are pursuing, you are on a journey, or peradventure you sleep, while your priests lift up their voice, and you answer them and their mockery with fire. Offerings are offered you every day, which others consume at your expense, in order that, on the grounds of your hearty meals, your existence seem probable. For all your fastidiousness, you nonetheless welcome all, if only they do not appear before you empty. I throw myself, like the philosopher, at the hearing feet of a tyrant. My gift is nothing but the lumps by which a god, like you, once burst in sunder. So let them be given to a pair of your worshipers, whom I wish to purge with these pills from devotion to your vanity."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, October 26, 2007 at 06:08 PM
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