Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER XLII. Page 2
"You don't share that idea?" said Deronda, finding a piquant incongruitybetween Pash's sarcasm and the strong stamp of race on his features.
"Granted, Mordecai," said Pash, quite good-humoredly. "And as the feelingof nationality is dying, I take the idea to be no better than a ghost,already walking to announce the death."
"A sentiment may seem to be dying and yet revive into strong life," saidDeronda. "Nations have revived. We may live to see a great outburst offorce in the Arabs, who are being inspired with a new zeal."
"Amen, amen," said Mordecai, looking at Deronda with a delight which wasthe beginning of recovered energy: his attitude was more upright, his facewas less worn.
"That may hold with backward nations," said Pash, "but with us in Europethe sentiment of nationality is destined to die out. It will last a littlelonger in the quarters where oppression lasts, but nowhere else. The wholecurrent of progress is setting against it."
"Ay," said Buchan, in a rapid thin Scotch tone which was like the lettingin of a little cool air on the conversation, "ye've done well to bring usround to the point. Ye're all agreed that societies change--not always andeverywhere--but on the whole and in the long run. Now, with all deference,I would beg t' observe that we have got to examine the nature of changesbefore we have a warrant to call them progress, which word is supposed toinclude a bettering, though I apprehend it to be ill-chosen for thatpurpose, since mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or a precipice.And the questions I would put are three: Is all change in the direction ofprogress? if not, how shall we discern which change is progress and whichnot? and thirdly, how far and in what way can we act upon the course ofchange so as to promote it where it is beneficial, and divert it where itis injurious?"
But Buchan's attempt to impose his method on the talk was a failure. Lilyimmediately said--
"Change and progress are merged in the idea of development. The laws ofdevelopment are being discovered, and changes taking place according tothem are necessarily progressive; that is to say, it we have any notion ofprogress or improvement opposed to them, the notion is a mistake."
joke, andwould not have objected to be called Voltairian. "Never mind. Let us havea Jewish night; we've not had one for a long while. Let us take thediscussion .
"I really can't see how you arrive at that sort of certitude about changesby calling them development," said Deronda. "There will still remain thedegrees of inevitableness in relation to our own will and acts, and thedegrees of wisdom in hastening or retarding; there will still remain thedanger of mistaking a tendency which should be resisted for an inevitablelaw that we must adjust ourselves to,--which seems to me as bad asuperstition or false god as any that has been set up without theceremonies of philosophising."
"That is a truth," said Mordecai. "Woe to the men who see no place forresistance in this generation! I believe in a growth, a passage, and a newunfolding of life whereof the seed is more perfect, more charged with theelements that are pregnant with diviner form. The life of a people grows,it is knit together and yet expanded, in joy and sorrow, in thought andaction; it absorbs the thought of other nations into its own forms, andgives back the thought as new wealth to the world; it is a power and anorgan in the great body of the nations. But there may come a check, anarrest; memories may be stifled, and love may be faint for the lack ofthem; or memories may shrink into withered relics--the soul of a people,whereby they know themselves to be one, may seem to be dying for want ofcommon action. But who shall say, 'The fountain of their life is dried up,they shall forever cease to be a nation?' Who shall say it? Not he whofeels the life of his people stirring within his own. Shall he say, 'Thatway events are wending, I will not resist?' His very soul is resistance,and is as a seed of fire that may enkindle the souls of multitudes, andmake a new pathway for events."
"I don't deny patriotism," said Gideon, "but we all know you have aparticular meaning, Mordecai. You know Mordecai's way of thinking, Isuppose." Here Gideon had turned to Deronda, who sat next to him, butwithout waiting for an answer he went on. "I'm a rational Jew myself. Istand by my people as a sort of family relations, and I am for keeping upour worship in a rational way. I don't approve of our people gettingbaptised, because I don't believe in a Jew's conversion to the Gentilepart of Christianity. And now we have political equality, there's noexcuse for a pretense of that sort. But I am for getting rid of all of oursuperstitions and exclusiveness. There's no reason now why we shouldn'tmelt gradually into the populations we live among. That's the order of theday in point of progress. I would as soon my children married Christiansas Jews. And I'm for the old maxim, 'A man's country is where he's welloff.'"
"That country's not so easy to find, Gideon," said the rapid Pash, with ashrug and grimace. "You get ten shillings a-week more than I do, and haveonly half the number of children. If somebody will introduce a brisk tradein watches among the 'Jerusalem wares,' I'll go--eh, Mordecai, what do yousay?"
Deronda, all ear for these hints of Mordecai's opinion, was inwardlywondering at his persistence in coming to this club. For an enthusiasticspirit to meet continually the fixed indifference of men familiar with theobject of his enthusiasm is the acceptance of a slow martyrdom, besidewhich the fate of a missionary tomahawked without any consideraterejection of his doctrines seems hardly worthy of compassion. But Mordecaigave no sign of shrinking: this was a moment of spiritual fullness, and hecared more for the utterance of his faith than for its immediatereception. With a fervor which had no temper in it, but seemed rather therush of feeling in the opportunity of speech, he answered Pash:--
"What I say is, let every man keep far away from the brotherhood andinheritance he despises. Thousands on thousands of our race have mixedwith the Gentiles as Celt with Saxon, and they may inherit the blessingthat belongs to the Gentile. You cannot follow them. You are one of themultitudes over this globe who must walk among the nations and be known asJews, and with words on their lips which mean, 'I wish I had not been borna Jew, I disown any bond with the long travail of my race, I will outdothe Gentile in mocking at our separateness,' they all the while feelbreathing on them the breath of contempt because they are Jews, and theywill breathe it back poisonously. Can a fresh-made garment of citizenshipweave itself straightway into the flesh and change the slow deposit ofeighteen centuries? What is the citizenship of him who walks among apeople he has no hardy kindred and fellowship with, and has lost the senseof brotherhood with his own race? It is a charter of selfish ambition andrivalry in low greed. He is an alien of spirit, whatever he may be inform; he sucks the blood of mankind, he is not a man, sharing in no loves,sharing in no subjection of the soul, he mocks it all. Is it not truth Ispeak, Pash?"
"Not exactly, Mordecai," said Pash, "if you mean that I think the worse ofmyself for being a Jew. What I thank our fathers for is that there arefewer blockheads among us than among other races. But perhaps you areright in thinking the Christians don't like me so well for it."
"Catholics and Protestants have not liked each other much better," saidthe genial Gideon. "We must wait patiently for prejudices to die out. Manyof our people are on a footing with the best, and there's been a goodfiltering of our blood into high families. I am for making ourexpectations rational."
"And so am I!" said Mordecai, quickly, leaning forward with the eagernessof one who pleads in some decisive crisis, his long, thin hands claspedtogether on his lap. "I, too, claim to be a rational Jew. But what is itto be rational--what is it to feel the light of the divine reason growingstronger within and without? It is to see more and more of the hiddenbonds that bind and consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea,consecrate it with kinship: the past becomes my parent and the futurestretches toward me the appealing arms of children. Is it rational todrain away the sap of special kindred that makes the families of men richin interchanged wealth, and various as the forests are various with theglory of the cedar and the palm? When it is rational to say, 'I know notmy father or my mother, let my children be aliens to me, that no prayer ofmine may touch them,' then it will be rational for the Jew to say, 'I willseek to know no difference between me and the Gentile, I will not cherishthe prophetic consciousness of our nationality--let the Hebrew cease tobe, and let all his memorials be antiquarian trifles, dead as the wall-paintings of a conjectured race. Yet let his child learn by rote thespeech of the Greek, where he abjures his fellow-citizens by the braveryof those who fought foremost at Marathon--let him learn to say that wasnoble in the Greek, that is the spirit of an immortal nation! But the Jewhas no memories that bind him to action; let him laugh that his nation isdegraded from a nation; let him hold the monuments of his law whichcarried within its frame the breath of social justice, of charity, and ofhousehold sanctities--let him hold the energy of the prophets, the patientcare of the Masters, the fortitude of martyred generations, as mere stufffor a professorship. The business of the Jew in all things is to be evenas the rich Gentile."
Mordecai threw himself back in his chair, and there was a moment'ssilence. Not one member of the club shared his point of view or hisemotion; but his whole personality and speech had on them the effect of adramatic representation which had some pathos in it, though no practicalconsequences; and usually he was at once indulged and contradicted.Deronda's mind went back upon what must have been the tragic pressure ofoutward conditions hindering this man, whose force he felt to be tellingon himself, from making any world for his thought in the minds of others--like a poet among people of a strange speech, who may have a poetry oftheir own, but have no ear for his cadence, no answering thrill to hisdiscovery of the latent virtues in his mother tongue.
The cool Buchan was the first to speak, and hint the loss of time. "Isubmit," said he, "that ye're traveling away from the questions I putconcerning progress."
"Say they're levanting, Buchan," said Miller, who liked his joke, andwould not have objected to be called Voltairian. "Never mind. Let us havea Jewish night; we've not had one for a long while. Let us take thediscussion on Jewish ground. I suppose we've no prejudice here; we're allphilosophers; and we like our friends Mordecai, Pash, and Gideon, as wellas if they were no more kin to Abraham than the rest of us. We're allrelated through Adam, until further showing to the contrary, and if youlook into history we've all got some discreditable forefathers. So I meanno offence when I say I don't think any great things of the part theJewish people have played in the world. What then? I think they wereiniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose we don't want any mento be maltreated, white, black, brown, or yellow--I know I've just givenmy half-crown to the contrary. And that reminds me, I've a curious oldGerman book--I can't read it myself, but a friend of mine was reading outof it to me the other day--about the prejudicies against the Jews, and thestories used to be told against 'em, and what do you think one was? Why,that they're punished with a bad odor in their bodies; and _that_, saysthe author, date 1715 (I've just been pricing and marking the book thisvery morning)--that is true, for the ancients spoke of it. But then, hesays, the other things are fables, such as that the odor goes away all atonce when they're baptized, and that every one of the ten tribes, mindyou, all the ten being concerned in the crucifixion, has got a particularpunishment over and above the smell:--Asher, I remember, has the right arma handbreadth shorter than the left, and Naphthali has pig's ears and asmell of live pork. What do you think of that? There's been a good deal offun made of rabbinical fables, but in point of fables my opinion is, thatall over the world it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. However,as I said before, I hold with the philosophers of the last century thatthe Jews have played no great part as a people, though Pash will have itthey're clever enough to beat all the rest of the world. But if so, I ask,why haven't they done it?"
"For the same reason that the cleverest men in the country don't getthemselves or their ideas into Parliament," said the ready Pash; "becausethe blockheads are too many for 'em."
"That is a vain question," said Mordecai, "whether our people would beatthe rest of the world. Each nation has its own work, and is a member ofthe world, enriched by the work of each. But it is true, as Jehuda-ha-Levifirst said, that Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart thecore of affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, andthe reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal lifeinto religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weakand to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us."
"They're not behind any nation in arrogance," said Lily; "and if they havegot in the rear, it has not been because they were over-modest."
"Oh, every nation brags in its turn," said Miller.
"Yes," said Pash, "and some of them in the Hebrew text."
"Well, whatever the Jews contributed at one time, they are a stand-stillpeople," said Lily. "They are the type of obstinate adherence to thesuperannuated. They may show good abilities when they take up liberalideas, but as a race they have no development in them."
"That is false!" said Mordecai, leaning forward again with his formereagerness. "Let their history be known and examined; let the seed besifted, let its beginning be traced to the weed of the wilderness--themore glorious will be the energy that transformed it. Where else is therea nation of whom it may be as truly said that their religion and law andmoral life mingled as the stream of blood in the heart and made onegrowth--where else a people who kept and enlarged their spiritual store atthe very time when they are hated with a hatred as fierce as the forestfires that chase the wild beast from his covert? There is a fable of theRoman, that swimming to save his life he held the roll of his writingsbetween his teeth and saved them from the waters. But how much more thanthat is true of our race? They struggled to keep their place among thenations like heroes--yea, when the hand was hacked off, they clung withtheir teeth; but when the plow and the harrow had passed over the lastvisible signs of their national covenant, and the fruitfulness of theirland was stifled with the blood of the sowers and planters, they said,'The spirit is alive, let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting becausemovable--so that it may be carried from generation to generation, and oursons unborn may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hopebuilt on an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it,though often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lyingwounded amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unknown dog, theHebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of themto fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he diffused it;his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines of Greece andcarrying their products to the world. The native spirit of our traditionwas not to stand still, but to use records as a seed and draw out thecompressed virtues of law and prophecy; and while the Gentile, who hadsaid, 'What is yours is ours, and no longer yours,' was reading the letterof our law as a dark inscription, or was turning its parchments into shoe-soles for an army rabid with lust and cruelty, our Masters were stillenlarging and illuminating with fresh-fed interpretation. But thedispersion was wide, the yoke of oppression was a spiked torture as wellas a load; the exile was forced afar among brutish people, where theconsciousness of his race was no clearer to him than the light of the sunto our fathers in the Roman persecution, who had their hiding-place in acave, and knew not that it was day save by the dimmer burning of theircandles. What wonder that multitudes of our people are ignorant, narrow,superstitious? What wonder?"
Here Mordecai, whose seat was next the fireplace, rose and leaned his armon the little shelf; his excitement had risen, though his voice, which hadbegun with unusual strength, was getting hoarser.
"What wonder? The night is unto them, that they have no vision; in theirdarkness they are unable to divine; the sun is gone down over theprophets, and the day is dark above them; their observances are asnameless relics. But which among the chief of the Gentile nations has notan ignorant multitude? They scorn our people's ignorant observance; butthe most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance--sunk to thecunning greed of the fox, to which all law is no more than a trap or thecry of the worrying hound. There is a degradation deep down below thememory that has withered into superstition. In the multitudes of theignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confessionof the divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organiccentre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of itsreligion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a polity, ourdispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of anational life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and theWest--which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be,as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come topass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel,and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, butin the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make allknowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories."
Mordecai's voice had sunk, but with the hectic brilliancy of his gaze itwas not the less impressive. His extraordinary excitement was certainlydue to Deronda's presence: it was to Deronda that he was speaking, and themoment had a testamentary solemnity for him which rallied all his powers.Yet the presence of those other familiar men promoted expression, for theyembodied the indifference which gave a resistant energy to his speech. Notthat he looked at Deronda: he seemed to see nothing immediately aroundhim, and if any one had grasped him he would probably not have known it.Again the former words came back to Deronda's mind,--"You must hope myhopes--see the vision I point to--behold a glory where I behold it." Theycame now with gathered pathos. Before him stood, as a living, sufferingreality, what hitherto he had only seen as an effort of imagination,which, in its comparative faintness, yet carried a suspicion, of beingexaggerated: a man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease,consciously within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intenselife in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, exceptfor its possible making some obstruction to a conceived good which hewould never share except as a brief inward vision--a day afar off, whosesun would never warm him, but into which he threw his soul's desire, witha passion often wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth. It wassomething more than a grandiose transfiguration of the parental love thattoils, renounces, endures, resists the suicidal promptings of despair--allbecause of the little ones, whose future becomes present to the yearninggaze of anxiety.