Page - 382 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 8382 and early 1770s) on the crucial role of language in the formation of human identities. Herder claimed that “all conditions of awareness in [man] are linguistic”—thus, as language acquisition took place in communities, reason and the capacity of thinking, the very distinguishing feature of the human ani- mal, was bound to have as many modes as there were human communities.139 Members of the Hungarian intellectual elite had good reasons for being at- tentive to such views, and also for taking them as an alarm bell. These develop- ments only added to von Schlözer’s notoriety as an “anti-Hungarian.” Indeed, even three decades later Mihály Csokonai Vitéz (1773–1805), the greatest of Hungarian lyricists of the time, still identified the German scholar—whose views as a political writer and expert of the state sciences, diametrically opposed to systems based on the distinction of estates, were also regarded as having contaminated not a few young Hungarians studying with him in Göttingen—as a chief national enemy: I believe that Atila is not needed for the augmentation of the glory of my noble nation: but I also believe that after Schlötzer [sic], who (at least to my mind) is one of the most nationally biased writers, we are insulted by some of the newer, and novelty seeking German authors when they want to call into question in one way or another that the Huns and the Hungar- ians derive from the same nation.140 Kollár was cast in the same role in the eyes of the Hungarian elite after 1764. A parliamentary committee assigned with the task of “investigating” the De originibus found it to be “the shame of living Hungarians” and achieved its in- clusion in the Index of prohibited books; this, and a torrent of pamphlets and libels critical of Kollár, forced him to issue an apologia.141 Despite the fact that Kollár was a distinguished scholar who as late as in 1763 drafted a plan of a so­ cietas litteraria or societas Hungarica (learned, or Hungarian society) for the promotion of the sciences in Hungary, and maintained intense correspon- dence about its establishment, he now lost his credit even in a part of the 139 Johann Gottfried Herder, Treatise on the Origin of Language [1772], in Philosophical Writ­ ings, trans. and ed. Michael N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65–164, here 131, 150. See also Fragments on Recent German Literature [1767–68], in Herder, Philosophical Writings, 33–64, here 49. 140 Mihály Csokonai Vitéz to István Kultsár, 1802 [?], in Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, Összes művei két kötetben, ed. Cyrill Horváth (Budapest: Magyar Könyvkiadó Intézet, 1901), 2:907. 141 Tibenský, A királynő könyvtárosa, 60–61.