"
Strauss was but twenty-eight years old when his cold, passionless, and
pungent piece of skeptical mechanism was presented to the world. Who
would suspect that quiet young man of possessing so much power over the
minds of his countrymen? M. Quinet, speaking of a visit to him, said,
"Beneath this mask of fatalism I find in him a young man full of
candor, of sweetness and modesty; of a spirit almost mystical, and
apparently saddened by the disturbance which he had occasioned." His
book produced a universal impression in Europe. It was, to the moral
sentiment of Christendom, the earthquake shock of the nineteenth
century. Having been multiplied in cheap editions, it was read by
students in every university and gymnasium, by passengers on the Rhine
boats and in the mountain stages, and by a great number of private
families. Even school children, imitating the example of their seniors,
spent their leisure hours in its perusal. The most obscure provincial
papers contained copious extracts from it, and vied with each other in
defending or opposing its positions.
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