The German _Goethe-bund_ finds occasion to make protest, in 1903, against the _lex Heinze_: “In Berlin, we are not only under the burden of dramatic censorship which never sleeps and which causes perpetual irritation, but we have to endure the exacting regulations of the general press law under which are controlled not merely journals but publications of all kinds. For instance, in the three months from October to December, 1902, no less than seventy-seven works were condemned and their further publication prohibited; that is to say, in these three months the civil authority condemned more books than had been placed in the prohibitory Index of Rome during the ten years preceding.” With such experience under the State control of the press, it is, claims Hilgers, absurd to make reference to “the pernicious interference with literature on the part of the Church censors.” Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_, prohibited, in its Italian translation, in the Roman Index since 1827, had, years before that date, come under the condemnation of the royal authority of Prussia. In October, 1792, a Cabinet order contains a bitter characterisation of the work: “Our sacred person you have with your so-called philosophy attempted to bring into contempt ... and you have at the same time assailed the truth of Scriptures and the foundations of Creed belief (_mich und Gott_).... We order that henceforth you shall employ your talents to better purpose and that you shall keep silence on matters which are outside of your proper functions.” The further circulation of the book was prohibited, but it is fair to remember that this prohibition proved entirely ineffective to suppress the book, even in Prussia. [Sidenote: Holland] The States General of Holland issued in 1581, and again in 1588, edicts prohibiting the printing, the reading, and the possession of certain condemned books, the lists of which were given with the edicts. These books were described as presenting “papistical superstitions.” In 1598, certain Socinian books which had been printed in Amsterdam were condemned as heretical by the theological professors of Leyden. The editions were confiscated and the books were publicly burned in The Hague. Among the noteworthy names included in the list of condemned authors may be cited those of Vondel, Grotius (who was certainly not to be ranked either as a Socinian or as an unbeliever, but whose form of Calvinism was not in accord with that of the authorities), Hobbes, and Spinoza. The poet Vondel, in 1641, went back into the Catholic Church and thereupon came under the proscription of the Synod of Delft as well as of the State. Before he accepted the Catholic Faith, he was accused of being an Arminian and a supporter of Olden-Barneveld. Later, his tragedy _Maria Stuart_, in which he declaimed against the murder of the Catholic queen, brought him again into trouble with the authorities.