The Poor Man of Toggenburg - Autobiography of Ulrich Bräker

Bräker's entry into the Moral Society of Lichtensteig was a great turning-point in his life; in a sense he became a different person (or became someone much closer to the person he had always felt himself to be), in that wider mental horizons opened out before him and he was able to remedy some of the limitations of his education. Its impact was all the greater in that it coincided with - and may have caused - the mid-life crisis which, I am fairly sure, happened to him at this time. Possibly it is no accident that the manuscripts of his diary for this time are missing, for it is at this time that he was beset by religious doubts and sexual frustration. It may also be no accident that the child born to him in 1773 remained the youngest. Seven children was a small family in Bräker's environment, it could be that his sexual relationship with his wife became intermittent or ceased altogether.

By joining the Moral Society, Bräker joined the great European cultural movement known as the Enlightenment, though how far he was conscious of doing so must remain uncertain. It seems likely that he was aware of intellectual changes taking place both in ultra-conservative Switzerland and elsewhere, since the majority of the books he read from the Society's library were recent publications, and many were translations of books in English and French.

As with the Pietist movement, it is difficult to find a precise date for the beginning of the Enlightenment, or to select names for its more significant leaders. As with most cultural developments of the 18th century, France played a leading part, though much of the progress in scientific discovery of the 17th century, which was one of its principal foundations, originated elsewhere, notably in England and Holland. Some of the Enlightenment's most important works in religion and philosophy, such as Pierre Bayle's "Dictionnaire historique" (1697) and Locke's "Essay on human understanding" (1690), also date back to the previous century. It was the publication of the French "Encyclopédie", whose first volume appeared in 1751, which marks the extension of the new ways of thought over Europe, beyond the älite group of scholars in France.

The Encyclopedia was projected as something far beyond a compendium of current knowledge, it was consciously planned to dispel ignorance, no matter from what exalted source it came, and to promote only facts and theories which could be proved by reasoned argument. Another aim was to raise the status of practical knowledge, so it included up-to-date accounts of developments not only in pure science but also in the useful arts and crafts, what we now call "technology" (a word first coined in the 18th century). The Encyclopedia typifies the Enlightenment's highest values: Reason, Nature and Usefulness, and its protest against the misery caused by all kinds of prejudice, intolerance, superstition and mystification, and all forms of outdated tradition.

By the time Bräker became involved, educated men all over Europe were claiming the right to think for themselves, to use their powers of reason to challenge every assumption on which the

ancien régime

was based, not only in more abstract fields of scholarship such as science and history, but in matters directly affecting people's political and personal lives, such as government, economics, morals and religion. Their aims are well summarised by John Moore in his novel "Mordaunt" [p 97]: "Reason and experience are the discoverers of truth; therefore none should be precluded from the exercise of their reasoning faculties; nor is any subject so sacred, that it ought not to be examined into."

The Enlightenment presented a much less united front when it came to their second great watchword: Nature. In the first decades of the century, the progress of scientific discovery, mainly in astronomy and physics, had led to the concept of the universe as a system governed by unchangeable laws, which man's reason could discover, and to some extent make use of to control nature and improve his lot on earth. Even more important was the idea that reason could discern the constants of human nature, and alter the social environment as well as the physical one. Nature was a perfect system, all parts working together in harmony, and human nature could also become perfect. Man had an innate sense of virtue, as of beauty and truth, this virtue could