  Nobody could have predicted the extent and the fury of the controversy that the publication of the book caused. The controversy goes in the literature under the name of the Spinozism or the Pantheism Dispute (Jacobi, 1916). Mendelssohn responded to Jacobi in writing (1786) but did not survive to see his reply in print. Already in bad health, he died (4 January 1786). Jacobi responded to the reply (1786). Both publications were notable for their bitterly personal tone. In retrospect, the controversy itself and the personal tone it assumed made sense, since the issues that Jacobi had raised had put into question the nature and the value of the new humanism being sponsored by the Enlightenment. As Goethe was to remark many years later, the controversy touched everyone in their deepest  convictions.[2]  Mendelssohn’s death caused the debate to become even more personal, for his defenders (notably the Berlin’s Aufklärer led by Nicolai) used it as an occasion to raise their hero to the status of martyr. One can gather a detailed account of the events, seen from Jacobi’s point of view, in the latter’s thick correspondence with Hamann of those years (Jacobi/Hamann, 1955–1979). Hamann sided with Jacobi, though his irrepressibly eccentric self could not refrain from repeatedly poking fun at his friend. Two unforeseen results of the episode were that Jacobi, until then a peripheral author, was propelled to the centre of public attention; and Spinoza’s philosophy, already influential among the literary circles of the Sturm und Drang but otherwise traditionally rejected by the philosophers of the schools, became an object of philosophical discussion.