all voluntary disabilities; there were enough and to spare of legally
imposed ones to keep him mindful of his Judaism. He felt strong enough
in faith to need no artificial shackles. He would be Jew, and yet
German--patriot, but no pariah. He would eschew vague dreams of
universalism, false ideas of tribalism. If Palestine had not been, he,
its product, could not be; but Palestine and its glories were of the
past and of the future; the present only was his, and he must shape his
life according to its conditions, which placed him, in the eighteenth
century, born of Jewish parents, in a German city. He was German by
birth, Jew by descent and by conviction; he would fulfil all the
obligations which country, race, and religion impose. But a German Jew,
who did not speak the language of his country? That, surely, was an
anomaly and must be set right. So he set himself strenuously to learn
German, and to make it his native language. Such secular study was by no
means an altogether safe proceeding. Ignorance, as we have seen, was
‘protected’ in those days by Jewish ecclesiastical authority. Free trade
in literature was sternly prohibited, and a German grammar, or a Latin
or a Greek one, had, in sober truth, to run a strict blockade. One
Jewish lad, it is recorded on very tolerable authority, was actually in
the year 1746 expelled the city of Berlin for no other offence than that
of being caught in the act of studying--one chronicle, indeed, says,
carrying--some such proscribed volume. Moses, however, was more
fortunate; he saved money enough to buy his books, or made friends
enough to borrow them; and, we may conclude, found nooks in which to
hide them, and hours in which to read them. He set himself, too, to gain
some knowledge of the Classics, and here he found a willing teacher in
one Kish, a medical student from Prague. Later on, another helper was
gained in a certain Israel Moses, a Polish schoolmaster, afterwards
known as Israel Samosc. This man was a fine mathematician, and a
first-rate Hebrew scholar; but as his attainments did not include the
German language, he made Euclid known to Moses through the medium of a
Hebrew translation. Moses, in return, imparted to Samosc his newly
acquired German, and learnt it, of course, more thoroughly through
teaching it. He must have possessed the art of making friends who were
able to take on themselves the office of teachers; for presently we find
him, in odd half-hours, studying French and English under a Dr. Aaron
Emrich.[33] He very early began to make translations of parts of the
Scripture into German, and these attempts indicate that, from the first,
his overpowering desire for self-culture sprang from no selfishness. He
wanted to open up the closed roads to place and honour, but not to tread
them alone, not to leave his burdened brethren on the bye-paths, whilst
he sped on rejoicing. He knew truly enough that ‘the light was sweet,’
and that ‘a pleasant thing it is to behold the sun.’ But he heeded, too,
the other part of the charge: he ‘remembered the days of darkness, which
were many.’ He remembered them always, heedfully, pitifully, patiently;
and to the weary eyes which would not look up or could not, he ever
strove to adjust the beautiful blessed light which he knew, and they,
poor souls, doubted, was good. He never thrust it, unshaded, into their
gloom: he never carried it off to illumine his own path.
Thus, the translations at which Moses Mendelssohn worked were no
transcripts from learned treatises which might have found a ready market
among the scholars of the day; but unpaid and unpaying work from the
liturgy and the Scriptures, done with the object that his people might
by degrees share his knowledge of the vernacular, and become gradually
and unconsciously familiar with the language of their country through
the only medium in which there was any likelihood of their studying it.
With that one set purpose always before him, of drawing his people with
him into the light, he presently formed the idea of issuing a serial in
Hebrew, which, under the title of _The Moral Preacher_, should introduce
short essays and transcripts on other than strictly Judaic or religious
subjects. One Bock was his coadjutor in this project, and two numbers of
the little work were published. The contents do not seem to have been
very alarming. To our modern notions of periodical literature, they
would probably be a trifle dull; but their mild philosophy and yet
milder science proved more than enough to arouse the orthodox fears of
the poor souls, who, ‘bound in affliction and iron,’ distrusted even the
gentle hand which was so eager to loose the fetters. There was a murmur
of doubt, of muttered dislike of ‘strange customs’; perhaps here and
there too, a threat concerning the pains and penalties which attached
to the introduction of such. At any rate, but two numbers of the poor
little reforming periodical appeared; and Moses, not angry at his
failure, not more than momentarily discouraged by it, accepted the
position and wasted no time nor temper in cavilling at it. He had learnt
to labour, he could learn to wait. And thus, in hard yet happy work,
passed away the seven years, from fourteen till twenty-one, which are
the seed-time of a man’s life. In 1750, when Moses was nearly of age, he
came into possession of what really proved an inheritance. A rich silk
manufacturer, named Bernhardt, who was a prominent member of the Berlin
synagogue, made a proposal to the learned young man, whose perseverance
had given reputation to his scholarship, to become resident tutor to his
children. The offer was gladly accepted, and it may be considered
Mendelssohn’s first step on the road to success. The first step to fame
had been taken when the boy had set out on his long tramp to Berlin.
Bernhardt was a kind and cultured man, and in his house Mendelssohn
found both congenial occupation and welcome leisure. He was teacher by
day, student by night, and author at odd half-hours. He turned to his
books with the greatest ardour; and we read of him studying Locke and
Plato in the original, for by this time English and Greek were both
added to his store of languages. His pupils, meanwhile, were never
neglected, nor in the pursuit of great ends were trifles ignored. In
more than one biography special emphasis is laid on his beautifully neat
handwriting, which, we are told, much excited his employer’s admiration.
This humble, but very useful, talent may possibly have been inherited,
with some other small-sounding virtues, from the poor father in Dessau,
to whom many a nice present was now frequently sent. At the end of three
or four years of tutorship, Bernhardt’s appreciation of the young man
took a very practical expression. He offered Moses Mendelssohn the
position of book-keeper in his factory, with some especial
responsibilities and emoluments attached to the office. It was a
splendid opening, although Moses Mendelssohn, the philosopher, eagerly
and gratefully accepting such a post somehow jars on one’s
susceptibilities, and seems almost an instance of the round man pushed
into the square hole. It was, however, an assured position; it gave him
leisure, it gave him independence, and in due time wealth, for as years
went on he grew to be a manager, and finally a partner in the house. His
tastes had already drawn him into the outer literary circle of Berlin,
which at this time had its headquarters in a sort of club, which met to
play chess and to discuss politics and philosophy, and which numbered
Dr. Gompertz, the promising young scholar Abbt, and Nicolai, the
bookseller,[34] among its members. With these and other kindred spirits,
Mendelssohn soon found pleasant welcome; his talents and geniality
quickly overcoming any social prejudices, which, indeed, seldom flourish
in the republic of letters. And, early disadvantages notwithstanding, we
may conclude without much positive evidence on the subject, that
Mendelssohn possessed that valuable, indefinable gift, which culture,
wealth, and birth united occasionally fail to bestow--the gift of good
manners. He was free alike from conceit and dogmatism, the Scylla and
Charybdis to most young men of exceptional talent. He had the loyal
nature and the noble mind, which we are told on high authority is the
necessary root of the rare flower; and he had, too, the sympathetic,
unselfish feeling which we are wont to summarise shortly as a good
heart, and which is the first essential to good manners.
When Lessing came to Berlin, about 1745, his play of _Die Juden_ was
already published, and his reputation sufficiently established to make
him an honoured guest at these little literary gatherings. Something of
affinity in the wide, unconventional, independent natures of the two
men; something, it may be, of likeness in unlikeness in their early
struggles with fate, speedily attracted Lessing and Mendelssohn to each
other. The casual acquaintance soon ripened into an intimate and
lifelong friendship, which gave to Mendelssohn, the Jew, wider knowledge
and illimitable hopes of the outer, inhospitable world--which gave to
Lessing, the Christian, new belief in long-denied virtues; and which,
best of all, gave to humanity those ‘divine lessons of Nathan der
Weise,’ as Goethe calls them--for which character Mendelssohn sat, all
unconsciously, as model, and scarcely idealised model, to his friend. It
was, most certainly, a rarely happy friendship for both, and for the
world. Lessing was the godfather of Mendelssohn’s first book. The
subject was suggested in the course of conversation between them, and a
few days after Mendelssohn brought his manuscript to Lessing. He saw no
more of it till his friend handed him the proofs and a small sum for the
copyright; and it was in this way that the _Philosophische Gespräche_
was anonymously published in 1754. Later, the friends brought out
together a little book, entitled _Pope as a Metaphysician_, and this was
followed up with some philosophical essays (‘Briefe über die
Empfindungen’) which quickly ran through three editions, and Mendelssohn
became known as an author. A year or two later, he gained the prize
which the Royal Academy of Berlin offered for the best essay on the
problem ‘Are metaphysics susceptible of mathematical demonstration?’ for
which prize Kant was one of the competitors.
Lessing’s migration to Leipzig, and his temporary absences from the
capital in the capacity of tutor, made breaks, but no diminution, in the
friendship with Mendelssohn; and the _Literatur-Briefe_, a journal cast
in the form of correspondence on art, science, and literature, to which
Nicolai, Abbt, and other writers were occasional contributors, continued
its successful publication till the year 1765. A review in this journal
of one of the literary efforts of Frederick the Second gave rise to a
characteristic ebullition of what an old writer quaintly calls ‘the
German endemical distemper of Judæophobia.’ In this essay, Mendelssohn
had presumed to question some of the conclusions of the royal author;
and although the contents of the _Literatur-Briefe_ were generally
unsigned, the anonymity was in most cases but a superficial disguise.
The paper drew down upon Mendelssohn the denunciation of a too loyal
subject of Frederick’s, and he was summoned to Sans Souci to answer for
it. Frederick appears to have been more sensible than his thin-skinned
defender, and the interview passed off amicably enough. Indeed, a short
while after, we hear of a petition being prepared to secure to
Mendelssohn certain rights and privileges of dwelling unmolested in
whichever quarter of the city he might choose--a right which at that
time was granted to but few Jews, and at a goodly expenditure of both
capital and interest. Mendelssohn, loyal to his brethren, long and
stoutly refused to have any concession granted on the score of his
talents which he might not claim on the score of his manhood in common
with the meanest and most ignorant of his co-religionists. And there is
some little doubt whether the partial exemptions which Mendelssohn
subsequently obtained, were due to the petition, which suffered many
delays and vicissitudes in the course of presentation, or to the subtle
and silent force of public opinion.
Meanwhile Mendelssohn married, and the story of his wooing, as first
told by Berthold Auerbach, makes a pretty variation on the old theme. It
was, in this case, no short idyll of ‘she was beautiful and he fell in
love.’ To begin with, it was all prosaic enough. A certain Abraham
Gugenheim, a trader at Hamburg, caused it to be hinted to Mendelssohn
that he had a virtuous and blue-eyed but portionless daughter, named
Fromet, who had heard of the philosopher’s fame, and had read portions
of his books; and who, mutual friends considered, would make him a
careful and loving helpmate. So Mendelssohn, who was now thirty-two
years old, and desirous to ‘settle,’ went to the merchant’s house and
saw the prim German maiden, and talked with her; and was pleased enough
with her talk, or perhaps with the silent eloquence of the blue eyes, to
go next day to the father and to say he thought Fromet would suit him
for a wife. But to his surprise Gugenheim hesitated, and stiffness and
embarrassment seemed to have taken the place of the yesterday’s cordial
greeting; still, it was no objection on his part, he managed at last to
stammer out. For a minute Mendelssohn was hopelessly puzzled, but only
for a minute; then it flashed upon him, ‘It is she who objects!’ he
exclaimed; ‘then it must be my hump’; and the poor father of course
could only uncomfortably respond with apologetic platitudes about the
unaccountability of girls’ fancies. The humour as well as the pathos of
the situation touched Mendelssohn, for he had no vanity to be piqued,
and he instantly resolved to do his best to win this Senta-like maiden,
who, less fortunate than the Dutch heroine, had had her pretty dreams of
a hero dispelled, instead of accentuated by actual vision. Might he see
her once again, he asked. ‘To say farewell? Certainly!’ answered the
father, glad that his awkward mission was ending so amicably. So
Mendelssohn went again, and found Fromet with the blue eyes bent
steadily over her work; perhaps to hide a tear as much as to prevent a
glance, for Fromet, as the sequel shows, was a tender-hearted maiden,
and although she did not like to look at her deformed suitor, she did
not want to wound him. Then Mendelssohn began to talk, beautiful glowing
talk, and the spell which his writings had exercised began again to work
on the girl. From philosophy to love, in its impersonal form, is an easy
transition. She grew interested and self-forgetful. ‘And do _you_ think
that marriages are made in heaven?’ she eagerly questioned, as some
early quaint superstition on this most attractive of themes was vividly
touched upon by her visitor. ‘Surely,’ he replied; ‘and some old beliefs
on this head assert that all such contracts are settled in childhood.
Strange to say, a special legend attaches itself to my fortune in this
matter; and as our talk has led to this subject perhaps I may venture
to tell it to you. The twin spirit which fate allotted to me, I am told,
was fair, blue-eyed, and richly endowed with all spiritual charms; but,
alas! ill-luck had added to her physical gifts a hump. A chorus of
lamentation arose from the angels who minister in these matters. The
“pity of it” was so evident. The burden of such a deformity might well
outweigh all the other gifts of her beautiful youth, might render her
morose, self-conscious, unhappy. If the load now had been but laid on a
man! And the angels pondered, wondering, waiting to see if any would
volunteer to take the maiden’s burden from her. And I sprang up, and
prayed that it might be laid upon my shoulders. And it was settled so.’
There was a minute’s pause, and then, so the story goes, the work was
passionately thrown down, and the tender blue eyes were streaming, and
the rest we may imagine. The simple, loving heart was won, and Fromet
became his wife.
They had a modest little house with a pretty garden on the outskirts of
Berlin, where a good deal of hospitality went on in a quiet, friendly
way. The ornaments of their dwelling were, perhaps, a little
disproportionate in size and quantity to the rest of the surroundings;
but this was no matter of choice on the part of the newly married
couple, since one of the minor vexations imposed on Jews at this date
was the obligation laid on every bridegroom to treat himself to a large
quantity of china for the good of the manufactory. The tastes or the
wants of the purchaser were not consulted; and in this especial instance
twenty life-sized china apes were allotted to the bridegroom. We may
imagine poor Mendelssohn and his wife eyeing these apes often, somewhat
as Cinderella looked at her pumpkin when longing for the fairy’s
transforming wand. Possibilities of those big baboons changed into big
books may have tantalised Mendelssohn; whilst Fromet’s more prosaic mind
may have confined itself to china and yet have found an unlimited range
for wishing. However, the unchanged and unchanging apes notwithstanding,
Mendelssohn and his wife enjoyed very many years of quiet and contented
happiness, and by and by came children, four of them, and then those old
ungainly grievances were, it is likely, transformed into playfellows.
Parenthood, perhaps, is never quite easy, but it was a very difficult
duty, and a terribly divided one, for a cultivated man who a century ago
desired to bring up his children as good Jews and good citizens. Many a
time, it stands on record, when this patient, self-respecting,
unoffending scholar took his children for a walk coarse epithets and
insulting cries followed them through the streets. No resentment was
politic, no redress was possible. ‘Father, is it _wicked_ to be a Jew?’
his children would ask, as time after time the crowd hooted at them.
‘Father, is it _good_ to be a Jew?’ they grew to ask later on, when in
more serious walks of life they found all gates but the Jews’ gate
closed against them. Mendelssohn must have found such questions
increasingly difficult to answer or to parry. Their very talents, which
enlarged the boundaries, must have made his clever children rebel
against the limitations which were so cruelly imposed. His eldest son
Joseph early developed a strong scientific bias; how could this be
utilised? The only profession which he, as a Jew, might enter, was that
of medicine, and for that he had a decided distaste: perforce he was
sent to commercial pursuits, and his especial talent had to run to
waste, or, at best, to dilettantism. When this Joseph had sons of his
own, can we wonder very much that he cut the knot and saved his children
from a like experience, by bringing them up as Christians?
Mendelssohn himself, all his life through, was unswervingly loyal to his
faith. He took every disability accruing from it, as he took his own
especial one, as being, so far as he was concerned, inevitable, and thus
to be borne as patiently as might be. To him, most certainly, it would
never have occurred to slip from under a burden which had been laid upon
him to bear. Concerning Fromet’s influence on her children records are
silent, and we are driven to conjecture that the pretty significance of
her name was somewhat meaningless.[35] The story of her wooing suggests
susceptibility, perhaps, rather than strength of heart; and it may be
that as years went on the ‘blue eyes’ got into a habit of weeping only
over sorrows and wrongs which needed a less eloquent and a more helpful
mode of treatment.
If Mendelssohn’s wife had been able to show her children the home side
of Jewish life, its suggestive ceremonialism, its domestic
compensations--possibly her sons, almost certainly her daughters, would
have learnt the brave, sweet patience that was common to Jewish mothers.
But this takes us to the region of ‘might have been.’ Gentle,
tender-hearted Fromet, it is to be feared, failed in true piety, and,
the mother anchor missing, the children drifted from their moorings.
The leisure of the years succeeding his marriage was fully occupied by
Mendelssohn in literary pursuits. The whole of the Pentateuch was, by
degrees, translated into pure German, and simultaneous editions were
published in German and in Hebrew characters. This great gift to his
people was followed by a metrical translation of the Psalms; a work
which took him ten years, during which time he always carried about with
him a Hebrew Psalter, interleaved with blank pages. In 1783 he published
his _Jerusalem_,[36] a sort of Church and State survey of the Jewish
religion. The first and larger part of it dwells on the distinction
between Judaism, as a State religion, and Judaism as the ‘inheritance’
of a dispersed nationality. He essays to prove the essential differences
between civil and religious government, and to demonstrate that penal
enactments, which in the one case were just and defensible, were, in the
changed circumstances of the other, harmful, and, in point of fact,
unjudicial. The work was, in effect, a masterly effort on Mendelssohn’s
part to exorcise the ‘cursing spirit’ which, engendered partly by
long-suffered persecution, and partly by long association with the
strict discipline of the Catholic Church, had taken a firm grip on
Jewish ecclesiastical authority, and was constantly expressing itself in
bitter anathema and morose excommunication. The second part of the book
is mainly concerned with a vindication of the Jewish character and a
plea for toleration. Scholarly and temperate as is the tone of this
work throughout, it yet evoked a good deal of rough criticism from the
so-called orthodox in both religious camps--from those well-meaning,
purblind persons of the sort who, Lessing declares, see only one road,
and strenuously deny the possible existence of any other.
In 1777, Frederic the Second desired to judge for himself whether Jewish
ecclesiastical authority clashed at any point with the State or
municipal law of the land. A digest of the Jewish Code on the general
questions, and more especially on the subject of property and
inheritance, was decreed to be prepared in German, and to Mendelssohn
was intrusted the task. He had the assistance of the Chief Rabbi of
Berlin, and the result of these labours was published in 1778, under the
title of _Ritual Laws of the Jews_. Another Jewish philosophical work
(published in 1785) was _Morning Hours_.[37] This was a volume of essays
on the evidences of the existence of the Deity and of conclusions
concerning His attributes deduced from the contemplation of His works.
Originally these essays had been given in the form of familiar lectures
on natural philosophy by Mendelssohn to his children and to one or two
of their friends (including the two Humboldts) in his own house, every
morning. In the same category of more distinctively Jewish books we may
place a translation of Manasseh Ben Israel’s famous _Vindiciæ Judæorum_,
which he published, with a very eloquent preface, so early as 1781, just
at the time when Dohm’s generous work on the condition of the Jews as
citizens of the State had made its auspicious appearance. Although this
is one of Mendelssohn’s minor efforts, the preface contains many a
beautiful passage. His gratitude to Dohm is so deep and yet so
dignified; his defence of his people is so wide, and his belief in
humanity so sincere; and the whole is withal so short, that it makes
most pleasant reading. One small quotation may perhaps be permitted, as
pertinent to some recent discussions on Jewish subjects. ‘It is,’ says
he, ‘objected by some that the Jews are both too indolent for
agriculture and too proud for mechanical trades; that if the
restrictions were removed they would uniformly select the arts and
sciences, as less laborious and more profitable, and soon engross all
light, genteel, and learned professions. But those who thus argue
conclude from the _present_ state of things how they will be in the
_future_, which is not a fair mode of reasoning. What should induce a
Jew to waste his time in learning to manage the plough, the trowel, the
plane, etc., while he knows he can make no practical use of them? But
put them in his hand and suffer him to follow the bent of his
inclinations as freely as other subjects of the State, and the result
will not long be doubtful. Men of genius and talent will, of course,
embrace the learned professions; those of inferior capacity will turn
their minds to mechanical pursuits; the rustic will cultivate the land;
each will contribute, according to his station in life, his quota to the
aggregate of productive labour.’