If you meant by the word steel-pen, a writing pen, I send you six nibs having no more in stock; they cost one Rthl. and they come from Mag. Steyer of Great Joachimstahl.
People think that it would better if you wrote yourself, so that a correct representation of your life was available, and then if your portrait were bound in the frontispiece it would receive a quick circulation. How greatly do our impressions of the same man vary when his life has been chronicled by several biographers.
Dr. Schweikert writes to Hahnemann:
Leipsic, 2/2/1835.
The steel pens which had been packed for a long time, had unfortunately been forgotten but they are coming at last; may you use them in good health in the service of suffering humanity as the High Priest of the temple of Aesculapius.
THE HISTORY OF THE STEEL PEN.
The inventor of the steel nib, which has become so indispensable, was a school teacher of Konigsberg, named Burger. In 1808 he made the first metal writing pens which he praised as “pen-beaks.” The Englishman Perry of Birmingham, utilised this invention in 1830 and patented it. Perry become a millionaire and Burger died in )the poor-house.
SUPPLEMENT 188.
HAHNEMANN OPINION OF KANT AND OTHER PHILOSOPHERS.
A letter to Mr.von Villers:
Torgau, January 30th, 1811.
I had known for some time that you had made our Kant available in France, but had not considered what an enormous effort it must have cost you even to understand his “Critic of Pure Reason” as so many German-born scientists cannot fathom or understand Kant, let alone translate him into a language which is hardly capable of reproducing his modes of expression. This has been done for the good of mankind. Your health, however, has suffered through this and other similar work, and you must now try to regain it completely. This the world asks of you through
me.
I admire Kant very much, particularly because he draws the line of philosophy, and of all human knowledge, where experience ends. If the remaining part of what he has thought and written had only unfolded itself a little more clearly before his inner vision, I think that he would not have enveloped himself in a cloud of such obscure sentences. His whole accepted philosophy ought, I think, to have been easily understood at least by all educated people, and to have been so comprehensible that no misunderstanding could arise. It is, however only my humble self who thinks this, and perhaps I am wrong. It is for this reason that I only value Plato when he is quite comprehensible and speaks clearly.
If the so-called philosophers who followed Kant had not written even more mystically and allowed their imagination so much play, if in one word they had kept, as Kant wanted them to, within the boundaries of experience. My fight to-day with the reform in medical science would have been an easier one.
SUPPLEMENT 189.
HAHNEMANN ON RELIGIOUS AND GENERAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS.
Baron von Gersdorff writes to Hahnemann:
Eisenach, April 7th, 1832.
I hope to see our kind Duchess Julie von Kothen in Rome, and I suppose I may remember you to her? i shall not become a Catholic, and I would prefer not even to limit myself to the creed of the Protestant, but rather to hold with you to Deism only in a higher sense than is taught by the sect of that name, as that is the faith which most nearly satisfies.
Your faithful friend and Godfather, A. BARON VON GERSDORFF.
Hahnemann to Stapf:
Kothen
(without more definite date but approximately, 1826 — R.H.)
The translation from the Chinese into German of Confucius’ works, by Schott, is very desirable. It conveys to the reader, Divine wisdom without miracles, fables or superstition. It is an important sign of the times that Confucius can now be read in our country. I shall soon embrace him in the realm of happy spirits; this benefactor of men who showed us the straight path to wisdom and to God, six and a half centuries before that Arch-Visionary (Christus — R.H.)
Kothen, July 19th, 1827.
The book on Entomology which you kindly sent me is very good, and I think that it would be difficult to obtain better information (albeit this is somewhat obscure) on the continued movements of the spider: it is a kind of flight, horizontally to and fro, and perpendicularly upwards. If this branch of Natural History (entomology) were not an infallible revelations of God’s wisdom, might and goodness briefly, if it did not reveal all that is necessary to urge every good man to joyfully accomplish His Will as it manifests itself in his conscience if we could not apprehend true religion even from this, then I have been spiritually blind.
Now in regard to the book by Wild! That is an entirely unknown fragment by the excellent Reimarus. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (born September 22nd, 1694, died March Ist, 1768), published as a thorough philologist but especially as an expert scholar of Hebrew, an essay on the “noblest truths of Natural Region” (Hamb., 1754); and further “The Doctrine of Reason” (Vernunftlehre), (1756). The rules laid down in these writings he amplified in the “Fragments”, which Lessing published in the years 1774, 1777, and 1778, as originating from one “unknown”. We know nothing of it except the middle portion which refers to Moses’ passage through the Red Sea. The Old Testament is there duly appreciated.
Oh! god, that truth and freedom from prejudice are so rare and that they have to hide so much before the senseless busy swarm of worldlings, who wish to indulge in their animal passions till their last breath, and yet wish to furtively acquire eternal happiness by a wrong path! Do try to procure for me if you can through Wild all the fragments whatever they may cost.
Kothen, January 14th, 1828.
I am so sorry that you should have so much trouble in procuring the fragments. Precisely that is withheld from the view of mankind, whence truth might beam into their eyes, and might divert their vision to themselves and to the grand universe in whose constant presence they would be obliged to be perfectly good, for nought can deliver them from the hell of their conscience when in the omnipresence of their supreme Benefactor, they forget the purpose of their being, and prefer the satisfaction of their animal passions to His approbation. There cannot possibly be anything in verum natura which can make the immoral blessed. That is self-contradictory, and woe to the seducers who delude the immoral by holding out the assured prospect of attaining perfect felicity; they thereby only increase the number o9f human devils — they bring unspeakable, incalculable misery on mankind. The all-good Deity who animates the infinite universe, lives also in us, for our highest, inestimable dowry, gave us reason and a spark of holiness in our conscience — out of the fulness of His own morality — which we only need to keep kindled by constant watchfulness over our actions, in order that it may glow through our whole beings, and thus be visible in all our transactions, that pure reason may with inexorable severity hold in subjugation our animal nature, so that the end of our existence here below may be profitably fulfilled, or which purpose the Deity has endowed us with sufficient strength.
Kothen, March 24th, 1828.
Great are the wondrous works of the Lord of Creation, immeasurable are His wisdom, power and goodness. I hope that you will be fortunate enough to obtain at Mohrenzoll’s suction the “Fragments” of Reimarus, a man who would not be bribed by superstition.
April 10th, 1828.
Is there any greater happiness than to do good?
Even when we have departed hence, the great, the only, the infinite Being, who promoted the happiness of all creatures will show us how to come nearer to His perfection and blessedness by further acts of beneficience, and how to become more like to Him through all eternity.
From a letter of Hahnemann to a patient, of October 16th, 1830:
Distribute your hours carefully. Every lost hour (not employed to our best advantage and to that of others) is an irreparable loss, which a sensitive conscience can never quite forgive.
There is nothing that we must watch over and restrain more than our physical inclinations, including that of imagination. The animal part of us requires constant supervision and as strict and unremitting control as our power of reason possesses;it is only through constant victory that we are made happy through this salutory and lofty consciousness — we feel then that we are resting in the friendship of the Only One.
Do you desire any other relations? There is none. Everything else is a miserable low human conception full of superstition — a true destruction of humanity.
SUPPLEMENT 190
HAHNEMANNS CONCEPTION OF HIS LIFE’S TASK AS ONE GIVEN BY GOD.
Hahnemann to Stapf:
Kothen,
April 15th, 1827.
I acknowledge with sincere thankfulness the infinite mercy of the one great Giver of all good for having preserved me hitherto in strength and cheerful spirits amidst all the assaults of my enemies; and I have no other wish left than to lay before the world in a worthy manner, the good which the Supreme Being has permitted me to discover, or I may say revealed to me, for the alleviation of the sufferings of mankind. Then I am ready to depart this life.
Richard Haehl was also an editor and publisher of the homeopathic journal Allgemcine, and other homeopathic publications.
Haehl was responsible for saving many of the valuable artifacts of Samuel Hahnemann and retrieving the 6th edition of the Organon and publishing it in 1921.
Richard Haehl was the author of - Life and Work of Samuel Hahnemann