III.—THE DISPERSION OF SOUL

Recent Books for reference -:—

The Story of the Jewish- People. Vol. II. By Jack M. Myers. (Kagan Paul. 3s. 6d. net.)

Essays on Jewish Life and Thought. The letters• of Benamrni, . 2nd series. (Longmans. 108. 6d. net..)

" There are those who question the very existence of Jesus ; but it is in history itself that Jesits is given body and reality. . . . In history His influence is enormous ; it reaches through powerfully to our own time. Suppose it were now established that Christ, as we are- acquainted with Him, never in fact existed —would that delete two thousand years from the life of mankind ? Nothing of those years would be in any way altered."

HELAN JAWORSKI.

IT -is not for the betrayal of -Christ that the Jews lost their souls ; it is not for their tenacity in disbelief. If any man has fought hard and honourably with the idea of Christ, he is entitled to reject it if -he can. The accusation against. them is that their betrayal was commonplace and their: shirking of the problem of Christ remains commonplace. They repudiate, even, the, glory of crucifying Him : the Romans were more to blame than we, they say ; and they say truly. They have never observed that a. new idea—not a new creed or a: new ethic—was born with the birth of •

Christianity. They have felt---so naturally and so weakly— that there was a reproach to cast at them if Christ were the subject of thought ; and the real meaning of that his- torical impetus they have shut off from themselves : they have suffered from a vast disability to examine themselves on this point. No wonder they have lost the thread of unified knowledge and have grown, more than ever, feminine, irritant, inspiring instead of creating. " It is perhaps its great significance in world history," said Weininger, " and the immense merit of Judaism that it, and nothing else, leads the- Aryan to a knowledge of himself and warns him against himself." But before we can at all understand the racial psychology of the Jews, we must see more precisely

what this scot:ma, this black patch in their vision, implies. The first and most frightening problem of life is this— Is there any witness that what I feel. and think and know, has any ground in reality 9 Is there any witness that I!

am ? It strikes us immediately, for example, that our very concept of God, or of being, or of reality, is held, lust as far as we can hold it, in our own consciousness and can only be a part of us ; and that nothing we think or do can have any validity apart from ourselves as proof of being ; for it is we who are conscious of it. " Man is the measure of things." Yes, but what man, and of what. things ? It is, as far as we can see, " I myself .measure myself with myself .

as standard." And what objective value can a process like that contain ? A foot-rule or a yard-rule, measuring itself in terms of itself, would arrive at the same result ; they would both fmd themselves to be one ; each would. discover

" I am the unit of the universe " ; a result quite without meaning.

Yes, but remember now that all phenomena, foot-rule and yard-rule and everything, exist only in consciousness. In whose consciousness ? Well, that we cannot say at this moment. In human consciousness. Human consciousness, as the modality of the existence of things, is plainly a category. of life. Human consciousness is itself divine. It is the,' second person of the Trinity, Logos. But, still, what guarantee have we that there is any connexion between this abstracts human consciousness, which is, and ourselves How can:

we be sure that we have in us the divine and trustworthy

awareness.?

Only by a belief in a Christ. Only by being sure that one man, at one time, bore in himself that utmost human con- sciousness which was the witness to his own existence, to

the existence of the universe, to the existence of God. There is nothing to show even that God exists unless one man should, have had perfect and complete-self-knowledge. • Otherwise

tOnd is a chimera of our dreaming, an ideal in our 'illusive consciousness. Ile is, to be precise, a fantastic projection of our foolish hunger for omnipotence, of our

desire to be. Only by belief in a Christ can man be assured 'that he is, that God is,- that anything is. For he must

believe man to have been real and man to have been God.

And it is just that " I Am " that a Jew, quite unwittingly, carelessly, and ignorantly, denies himself. He still throws -" I Am " upon God, and denies God a witness. He hungers 'for omnipotence, and refuses the one path by which he can gain it.

So it happens that no Jew can accept tranquilly the gift of individuality. He wears himself out in the process Of attempting to acquire it, to acquire power over himself and self-assurance. In finance, in art, in politics, he seeks power to redress that knowledge of powerlessness in himself ; he gains power only to discover that he has misapplied his

energies and has missed contentment. He -depreciates men

and human values 'in order to enhance himself. He depre- ciates himself in order to triumph in his humility. He throws himself into company to find a larger ego, a self, by identifying himself with others ; but he refuses to sacrifice his own ego to the group. No man demands so much loyalty from his friends or gives so little in return. He is passionate in

his race-solidarity ; for there, in Judaism, he sees again some larger self. He rebels against his race, is ashamed of

his race, -repudiates-his race, in order to feel himself superior 'to it, in order to feel himself, somehow, an individual. If you observe an Anti-Semite, suspect a Jew.

Because of this unrest and hunger, Jews are the most intelligent race in the world. It might almost be said, " If you see an intelligent man, suspect a Jew." They are the earliest and chief appreciators in all the arts. They are quickest in sensibility and understanding. But self-creation is beyond them ; and so any great objective creation is beyond them, too.

It may be said that their persecution throughout the Christian age has modified them and forced upon them for self-preservation the qualities they display. It is true enough that in the name of Christ they have been badgered and beaten and wretchedly used for centuries. Even at this day a Jewish child will be pushed off a slum pavement or bombarded with stones. Even to-day other children will call out after him, " Who killed Christ ? Who -killed Christ ? " And it would seem no oddity if that alone had kept them from mixing with the race among which they dwelt and had made them inveterate in that always notice- -able " exclusive hearing towards the genius of other races, and those superstitions arising from a belief in the high value of their peculiar nationality." But their persecution could result only in pride or servility ; it could not set such complex and various markings upon their consciousness. Then what are we to do with the Jews ? Why, nothing.

They are no danger to any State. If there arc no supreme geniuses among them, neither are there any criminals. They are the hardest-working and most profitable citizens a State could have ; and their problems are internal only. They are, too, as I have remarked, the most intelligent race in the world and the best missionaries of culture. No, it is rather to be discussed, as Weininger said, What are we to do with ourselves ? How are we to escape from the Judaism which lies in our own natures ? What is the Aryan response and antithesis to the negative virtues and vices of the Jews ? Let no one be so impertinent as to think that he is nearer salvation than a Jew.

Yet there does remain a problem to be settled. In all this tumult of modern Judaism there still exists a number, even a majority, of pre-Christian Jews. There still remain vestiges of the • old patriarchal system. And over the question of . Zionism the whole race is divided. It would seem simple to propose—Let the patriarchs of Israel go back to Zion ; let all who wish go, and all who are satisfied with their adopted countries stay there. Unfortunately it is not necessarily the Zionists who want to go back to Palestine. Zionism is a cause like any other, and attracts enthusiasm merely by being a cause. But if the Jews are ever to find contentment -and a new racial purpose, it must happen that those who continue to adhere from the heart to the Old Testament worship should turn themselves into an independent and self-contained nation ; and the others, the sick souls among

them, should abandon all distinction from the people among whom they are living, forget the arrogance of Judaism which they have put on without deserving it, and learn, if not to embrace Christianity, at least to consider it without blenching.

ALAN PorerEn.