Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam

Erasmus of Rotterdam's message and life's essence is a harmonious synthesis of opposites in the human spirit. He was born with a binding or, to use Goethe's phrase, a "communicative spirit," which he shared with Goethe in his disapproval of anything drastic. Every violent upheaval, every "tumultus," every turbid mass quarrel seemed to him to be incompatible with the simple meaning of world purpose to which he felt attached, and war, in particular, seemed to him to be the crudest and most violent mode of inner opposition, incompatible with a morally thinking humanity.