This analysis of how Andrea’s books should be considered as a compilation, in the


form of a novel, of all the superstitions and delusions of his own time, written with the sole ambition to earn money and sell books, seems also to apply or even be directed at Herder’s own time. One of the most important novelistic genres in the second half of the 18th century, vastly contributing to Leseseuche, the epidemic of reading, that was spreading all over Germany, was the so-called “novel of secret societies”, the “Geheimbundroman” – gaining a lot of its popularity from the fact that the readers were unable to tell the difference between real and fictitious secrets. Obviously, this is one function of secrecy that Herder wants to warn against in his letters: Chymie, Alchimie, Mystik, Traumdeuterei, Astrologie waren im höchsten Ansehen und es konnte nicht anders seyn, als – wie es ja auch wieder zu werden anfängt – dass mancherlei Betrug und Wahn dahinter seine Zuflucht suchte. 6 If we move on to the first of Herder’s dialogues on Freemasonry, “Glaucon und Nicias”, that remained unpublished till after his death, this contemporary perspective – wie es ja wieder zu werden anfängt – is the central one. This text is a harsh, even contemptuous criticism of Masonic practices. Furthermore, it ties in nicely with the letters against Nicolai in the way it focuses more or less exclusively on the functional aspects of secrecy and the effects on the culture of Enlightenment. Almost in a systematic manner Herder explores the consequences of secrecy for the concepts of science, of morality and of religion – geheime Wissenschaften, geheime Moral and geheime Religion. First the two men engaged in a conversation, Glaucon and Nicias, ridicule the notion of geheime Wissenschaft, as if nature had decided to remove her veil and uncover all her secrets, or as if a new artificial sense, eine neue künstliche Sinne, had been invented that only those who are initiated to a secret society had access to. Geheime Moral, on the other hand, cannot be anything but deceit, Betrug, practiced by beautiful women, priests and state ministers: “Minister”, Herder writes, “glauben die ganze Welt für ihren Fürsten hintergehen zu müssen; betrügen aber am Ende meistens ihn oder sich selbst”. 7 Third, geheime Religion, according to Glaucon and Nicias, can be nothing but Schwärmerei. This, they conclude, is the danger that the secret societies represent: “Sie sind Winkel, die sich dem Licht der Sonne verschließen, damit hier den Betrug, dort die Schwärmerei ausbrüten können […].”8 Not by coincidence the chapter on Freemasons in the Adrastea is placed immediately before the chapter on Methodisten and Enthusiasten. It would be easy, then, to conclude that Herder was in fact an enemy of the secret societies and that his attack on Nicolai is in fact an attack on the secret societies in general and Freemasonry in particular, If this is the case, however, why would he take the trouble of defending the Templars against Nicolai’s


accusations? Even though the letters themselves give no definite answer, there are passages in them that seem to indicate that Herder have a more historico-philosophical


6 15, s. 61 7 15, s. 168 8 15, s. 171


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