Nicolai the scholarly tradition has concluded that Herder’s own contribution to this dialogue is rather inconsequential, editing, mostly abridging Lessing’s original text and then adding a new, apparently not as illuminating ending. In this assessment, however, what is overlooked, is the immediate discursive context of the dialogue, the way it is included in a book, and in a part of a book, describing the birth, development and origins of the political and social concept of Humanität. Already at the very beginning of the Herder’s work, in the first letter, that also serve as an introduction, the connection is made between Humanität and the secret societies: “Je reiner die Gedanken der Menschen sind, desto mehr stimmen sie zusammen; die wahre unsichtbare Kirche durch alle Zeiten, durch alle Länder ist nur Eine”.13 Furthermore, Herder “ein Bund der Humanität”, a bond, an alliance an association, has been formed between he who writes and he who reads the letters, “wahrer, wenigstens unanmaßender und stiller, als einer je geschlossen ward.” Thus, Humanität – as utopian concept of movement, of progress – takes the historical form of an invisible, silent society, much like a Masonic lodge, but in which every man can be or even is a member. In the dialogue itself follows a further description of


this society. Before introducing his own thoughts in the second dialogue Herder sums up Lessing’s arguments: The society he is referring to, “Er” says, “is not something arbitrary, something dispensable, but something necessary, that one could discover for oneself as well as being introduced to it by others”. But, he continues, it is not “the words, signs and rituals that are important”. This society, “Ich” answers, is “not closed, but open to the entire world, it doesn’t express itself through rituals and symbols, but in clear words and actions; it doesn’t exist in one or two nations only, but among enlightened people all over the world”.14 In short, it is die Gesellschaft aller denkenden Menschen in allen Weltteilen. Obviously, Herder is still working with the idea of the secret society, of the Masonic lodge, but at the same time he is dialectically changing it, step by step, into an ideal of openness and communication. Thus, in the place of the practices of secrecy he introduces the printing press, die Buchdruckerei. After the invention of the printing press, Herder argues, there shall be no secret words or signs anymore, keine geheime Worte und Zeichen. Instead there is “das heilige Dreieck” – a well-known Masonic symbol – of poetry, philosophy and history that makes us rise above the prejudices of state, religion, rank and status. The member of this world-wide society are, on the one hand, the great men of the past, Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Tacitus, Marc Antony, Bacon and Fenelon, on the other hand, the ones among our contemporaries that share our cosmopolitan conviction and that we recognize at once: “Setze zwei Menschen von gleichen Grundsätzen zusammen; ohne


14 7, s. 138. 56


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