A Reattributed Aphorism

The now largely forgotten J.C. Friedrich Schulz was a prolific and popular writer of the late Enlightenment in Germany. In December 1790, he published thirty aphorisms — or “Zerstreuete Gedanken” — in the Deutsche Monatsschrift. One of them struck me as familiar:

Hardly any teachers of a faith defend their dogmas because they are convinced of their truth, but rather because they have maintained their truth.

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[Die wenigsten Glaubenslehrer vertheidigen ihre Dogmen, weil sie von ihrer Wahrheit überzeugt sind, sondern, weil sie ihre Wahrheit behauptet haben.] [1]

This is remarkably similar to an aphorism that appeared in G.C. Lichtenberg’s private notebooks between 1789 and 1793:

Most teachers of a faith defend their propositions, not because they are convinced of their truth, but rather because they have once maintained their truth.

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[Die meisten Glaubens-Lehrer verteidigen ihre Sätze, nicht weil sie von der Wahrheit derselben überzeugt sind, sondern weil sie die Wahrheit derselben einmal behauptet haben.] [2]

As well as philosophical sketches and aphorisms, Lichtenberg’s Sudelbücher contain observational fragments, literary references, and quotations that struck him as worthy of note. So far as I know, it has not been previously observed that this particular aphorism is a close paraphrase of Schulz’s published one.

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[1] F. Schulz, “Zerstreuete Gedanken”, nr.12, Deutsche Monatsschrift, 3.Bd., Dezember 1790, p.382, digitalised by Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld. (A further thirty aphorisms were published in Ibid., 1.Bd, Februar 1791.)

[2] G.C. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, (Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1984), J.502 from Sudelbuch J (1789-1793), p. 387.