A book could carry its own critic into the reader’s study. Johann Lorenz Mosheim (1693–1755) published a Latin translation of Cudworth’s True Intellectual System in 1733, adding extensive notes that challenged its account of ancient thought. The translated work preserved the evidence gathered by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688). The annotations questioned the agreements he believed that evidence disclosed.
Cudworth had sought witnesses to an ancient knowledge of one supreme God. Mosheim was more willing to divide the traditions that his author brought together. Teachings about the world proceeding from divine being acquired a different significance when placed in a history of religious error. An idea that appeared to confirm early wisdom in the main text could become a source of later heresy in the notes.
Mosheim distinguished what he called Oriental philosophy from Greek Platonism, using that division to explain how particular doctrines had developed. The classification was itself a historical judgment. It grouped materials under an eastern origin that still had to be established, even as it corrected the tendency to make ancient authors agree. His scepticism toward one synthesis produced another arrangement of the same difficult evidence.
Readers consequently received more than a translation. They could follow a dispute about how the history of philosophy should be written, with substantial ancient testimony available on both sides. Mosheim’s annotations helped prepare material for later reference works, where his distinctions might become the headings under which a new reader first encountered the subject. Opening the translated book meant encountering Cudworth’s ancient witnesses in the company of an interpreter who disputed what they had been called to prove.