As he says in some other place of himself, nature never intended him, either physically or morally, for a wrestler; and this little essay, where there is no strain of argument or scope for deep erudition, is yet no unworthy specimen of the great philosopher’s powers. Poetic attempts too, and mostly on religious subjects, occasionally varied his counting-house duties and his more serious labours; but although he truly possessed, if ever man did, what Landor calls ‘the poetic heart,’ yet it is in his prose, rather than in his poetry, that we mostly see its evidences. The book which is justly claimed as his greatest, and which first gave him his title to be considered a wide and deep-thinking philosopher, is his _Phædon_.[38] The idea of such a work had long been germinating in him, and the death of his dear friend Abbt, with whom he had had many a fruitful discussion on the subject, turned his thoughts more fixedly on the hopes which make sorrows bearable, and the work was published in the year following Abbt’s death. The first part is a very pure and classical German rendering of the original Greek form of Plato, and the remainder an eloquent summary of all that religion, reason, and experience urge in support of a belief in immortality. It is cast in the form of conversation between Socrates and his friends--a choice in composition which caused a Jewish critic (M. David Friedländer) to liken Moses Mendelssohn to Moses the lawgiver. ‘For Moses spake, and _Socrates_ was to him as a mouth’ (Ex. iv. 15). In less than two years _Phædon_ ran through three German editions, and it was speedily translated into English, French, Dutch, Italian, Danish, and Hebrew. Then, at one stride, came fame; and great scholars, great potentates, and even the heads of his own community, sought his society. But fame was ever of incomparably less value to Mendelssohn than friendship, and any sort of notoriety he honestly hated. Thus, when his celebrity brought upon him a polemical discussion, the publicity which ensued, notwithstanding that the personal honour in which he was held was thereby enhanced, so thoroughly upset his nerves that the result was a severe and protracted illness. It came about in this wise: Lavater, the French pastor, in 1769, had translated Bonnet’s _Evidences of Christianity_ into German; he published it with the following dedication to Moses Mendelssohn:-- ‘DEAR SIR,--I think I cannot give you a stronger proof of my admiration of your excellent writings, and of your still more excellent character, that of an Israelite in whom there is no guile; nor offer you a better requital for the great gratification which I, some years ago, enjoyed in your interesting society, than by dedicating to you the ablest philosophical inquiry into the evidences of Christianity that I am acquainted with.