Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER XLII. Page 3
All eyes were fixed on Mordecai as he sat down again, and none withunkindness; but it happened that the one who felt the most kindly was themost prompted to speak in opposition. This was the genial and rationalGideon, who also was not without a sense that he was addressing the guestof the evening. He said--
"You have your own way of looking at things, Mordecai, and as you say,your own way seems to you rational. I know you don't hold with therestoration of Judea by miracle, and so on; but you are as well aware as Iam that the subject has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by Jewsand Christians. And as to the connection of our race with Palestine, ithas been perverted by superstition till it's as demoralizing as the oldpoor-law. The raff and scum go there to be maintained like able-bodiedpaupers, and to be taken special care of by the angel Gabriel when theydie. It's no use fighting against facts. We must look where they point;that's what I call rationality. The most learned and liberal men among uswho are attached to our religion are for clearing our liturgy of all suchnotions as a literal fulfillment of the prophecies about restoration, andso on. Prune it of a few useless rites and literal interpretations of thatsort, and our religion is the simplest of all religions, and makes nobarrier, but a union, between us and the rest of the world."
"As plain as a pike-staff," said Pash, with an ironical laugh. "You pluckit up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark, shave off the knots,and smooth it at top and bottom; put it where you will, it will do noharm, it will never sprout. You may make a handle of it, or you may throwit on the bonfire of scoured rubbish. I don't see why our rubbish is to beheld sacred any more than the rubbish of Brahmanism or Buddhism."
"No," said Mordecai, "no, Pash, because you have lost the heart of theJew. Community was felt before it was called good. I praise nosuperstition, I praise the living fountains of enlarging belief. What isgrowth, completion, development? You began with that question, I apply itto the history of our people. I say that the effect of our separatenesswill not be completed and have its highest transformation unless our racetakes on again the character of a nationality. That is the fulfillment ofthe religious trust that moulded them into a people, whose life has madehalf the inspiration of the world. What is it to me that the ten tribesare lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the children of Judah havemixed themselves with the Gentile populations as a river with rivers?Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; they are torn andsoiled and trodden on; but there is a jeweled breastplate. Let the wealthymen, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skilfulin all arts, the speakers, the political counselors, who carry in theirveins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, andthe pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, 'we will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hardbut glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthyfruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained theirseparateness, refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough toredeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have theskill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade.And is there no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of ChristianEurope tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife whichthe Turk gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent anarena? There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity,grand, simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality ofprotection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of ourancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western freedomamid the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an organiccentre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jewshall have a defense in the court of nations, as the outraged Englishmanof America. And the world will gain as Israel gains. For there will be acommunity in the van of the East which carries the culture and thesympathies of every great nation in its bosom: there will be a land setfor a halting-place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgiumis for the West. Difficulties? I know there are difficulties. But let thespirit of sublime achievement move in the great among our people, and thework will begin."
"Ay, we may safely admit that, Mordecai," said Pash. "When there are greatmen on 'Change, and high-flying professors converted to your doctrine,difficulties will vanish like smoke."
Deronda, inclined by nature to take the side of those on whom the arrowsof scorn were falling, could not help replying to Pash's outfling, andsaid--
"If we look back to the history of efforts which have made great changes,it is astonishing how many of them seemed hopeless to those who looked onin the beginning.
"Take what we have all heard and seen something of--the effort after theunity of Italy, which we are sure soon to see accomplished to the verylast boundary. Look into Mazzini's account of his first yearning, when hewas a boy, after a restored greatness and a new freedom to Italy, and ofhis first efforts as a young man to rouse the same feelings in other youngmen, and get them to work toward a united nationality. Almost everythingseemed against him; his countrymen were ignorant or indifferent,governments hostile, Europe incredulous. Of course the scorners oftenseemed wise. Yet you see the prophecy lay with him. As long as there is aremnant of national consciousness, I suppose nobody will deny that theremay be a new stirring of memories and hopes which may inspire arduousaction."
"Amen," said Mordecai, to whom Deronda's words were a cordial. "What isneeded is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The heritage ofIsrael is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in their veins as apower without understanding, like the morning exultation of herds; it isthe inborn half of memory, moving as in a dream among writings on thewalls, which it sees dimly but cannot divide into speech. Let the torch ofvisible community be lit! Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in agreat outward deed, and let there be another great migration, anotherchoosing of Israel to be a nationality whose members may still stretch tothe ends of the earth, even as the sons of England and Germany, whomenterprise carries afar, but who still have a national hearth and atribunal of national opinion. Will any say 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinozahad not a faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of hisintellect at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father'snakedness and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' YetBaruch Spinoza confessed, he saw not why Israel should not again be achosen nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race aredead? Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece andRome, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe,and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dugfrom the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver inmillions of human frames."
Mordecai had stretched his arms upward, and his long thin hands quiveredin the air for a moment after he had ceased to speak. Gideon was certainlya little moved, for though there was no long pause before he made a remarkin objection, his tone was more mild and deprecatory than before; Pash,meanwhile, pressing his lips together, rubbing his black head with bothhis hands and wrinkling his brow horizontally, with the expression of onewho differs from every speaker, but does not think it worth while to sayso. There is a sort of human paste that when it comes near the fire ofenthusiasm is only baked into harder shape.
"It may seem well enough on one side to make so much of our memories andinheritance as you do, Mordecai," said Gideon; "but there's another side.It isn't all gratitude and harmless glory. Our people have inherited agood deal of hatred. There's a pretty lot of curses still flying about,and stiff settled rancor inherited from the times of persecution. How willyou justify keeping one sort of memory and throwing away the other? Thereare ugly debts standing on both sides."
"I justify the choice as all other choice is justified," said Mordecai. "Icherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but thegood which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our religiouslife, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of aught butwrong. The Master has said, an offence against man is worse than anoffence against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the breasts ofJews, who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what wonder, sincethere is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Our national life was agrowing light. Let the central fire be kindled again, and the light willreach afar. The degraded and scorned of our race will learn to think oftheir sacred land, not as a place for saintly beggary to await death inloathsome idleness, but as a republic where the Jewish spirit manifestsitself in a new order founded on the old, purified and enriched by theexperience our greatest sons have gathered from the life of the ages. Howlong is it?--only two centuries since a vessel carried over the ocean thebeginning of the great North American nation. The people grew like meetingwaters--they were various in habit and sect--there came a time, a centuryago, when they needed a polity, and there were heroes of peace among them.What had they to form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected bythe vision of a better? Let our wise and wealthy show themselves heroes.They have the memories of the East and West, and they have the full visionof a better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in artand wisdom. So will a new Judaea, poised between East and West--a covenantof reconciliation. Will any say, the prophetic vision of your race hasbeen hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry: the angel of progress has nomessage for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the paid workers to layopen--the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken field? I say that thestrongest principle of growth lies in human choice. The sons of Judah haveto choose that God may again choose them. The Messianic time is the timewhen Israel shall will the planting of the national ensign. The Nileoverflowed and rushed onward: the Egyptian could not choose the overflow,but he chose to work and make channels for the fructifying waters, andEgypt became the land of corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royaltyof discernment and resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, askno choice or purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divineprinciple of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let uscontradict the blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and thebetter future of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let usbe as if we were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage,claim the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhoodwith the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there; it will befulfilled."
With the last sentence, which was no more than a loud whisper, Mordecailet his chin sink on his breast and his eyelids fall. No one spoke. It wasnot the first time that he had insisted on the same ideas, but he was seento-night in a new phase. The quiet tenacity of his ordinary self differedas much from his present exaltation of mood as a man in private talk,giving reasons for a revolution of which no sign is discernable, differsfrom one who feels himself an agent in a revolution begun. The dawn offulfillment brought to his hope by Deronda's presence had wroughtMordecai's conception into a state of impassioned conviction, and he hadfound strength in his excitement to pour forth the unlocked floods ofemotive argument, with a sense of haste as at a crisis which must beseized. But now there had come with the quiescence of fatigue a sort ofthankful wonder that he had spoken--a contemplation of his life as ajourney which had come at last to this bourne. After a great excitement,the ebbing strength of impulse is apt to leave us in this aloofness fromour active self. And in the moments after Mordecai had sunk his head, hismind was wandering along the paths of his youth, and all the hopes whichhad ended in bringing him hither.
Every one felt that the talk was ended, and the tone of phlegmaticdiscussion made unseasonable by Mordecai's high-pitched solemnity. It wasas if they had come together to hear the blowing of the _shophar_, and hadnothing to do now but to disperse. The movement was unusually general, andin less than ten minutes the room was empty of all except Mordecai andDeronda. "Good-nights" had been given to Mordecai, but it was evident hehad not heard them, for he remained rapt and motionless. Deronda would notdisturb this needful rest, but waited for a spontaneous movement.