Almost always the nations created to play a part in universal
civilization, like Judæa, Greece, and the Italy of the renaissance,
exercise their full action upon the world, only after becoming victims
to their own grandeur. They must first die; then the world lives on
them, assimilates to itself that which they have created at the price of
their fever and their sufferings. Nations ought to choose in fact
between the long, tranquil, obscure destiny of that which lives for
itself, and the troubled, stormy career of that which lives for
humanity. The nation which works out social and religious problems in
its own bosom is almost always weak politically. Every country which
dreams of a kingdom of God, which lives for general ideas, which pursues
a work of universal interest, sacrifices through the same its individual
destiny, enfeebles and destroys its _rôle_ as a terrestrial country.
One can never set himself on fire with impunity. Since Judæa made the
religious conquest of the world, it was necessary that she should
disappear as a nation. A revolution of extreme violence broke out in
this country in the year 66. During four years, this strange race, which
seemed created to defy equally that which blessed and that which cursed
it, was in a convulsion before which the historian should pause with
respect as he would before all mystery.
The causes of this crisis were very old, and the crisis itself was
inevitable. The Mosaic law, a work of exalted Utopians possessed of a
powerful socialist ideal,--the least politic of men,--was, like the
Islam, exclusive of a civil society parallel with a religious society.
This law, which appears to have been drawn up, as we now read it, in the
seventh century before Jesus Christ, would have been the means of
destroying the little kingdom of the descendants of David, even without
the Assyrian conquest. Since the preponderance assumed by the prophetic
element, the kingdom of Judah--embroiled with all its neighbors, seized
with a permanent rage against Tyre, hating Edom, Moab, and Ammon--could
no longer survive. I repeat, a nation which devotes itself to social and
religious problems neglects its politics. The day in which Israel became
"a peculiar people of God, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation," it was
written that she should no longer be a nation as other nations.
Contrary destinies cannot be united: an exaltation is always expiated by
an abasement.
The Achemenidean kingdom gave Israel little repose. This grand
feudality, tolerant towards all provincial differences, almost analogous
to the Califat of Bagdad and to the Ottoman Empire, was the rule under
which the Jews found themselves most at ease. The Ptolemaic rule in the
third century before Jesus Christ seemed equally sympathetic to them:
there were even no Seleucidæ. Antioch had become an active centre of
Hellenic propagandism. Antiochus Epiphanus felt it necessary to set up
everywhere the image of Jupiter Olympus as the sign of his power. Then
broke out the first great Jewish revolt against profane civilization.
Israel had patiently supported the disappearance of its political
existence since Nebuchadnezzar. It retained no measure in which it saw a
danger to its religious institutions. A race, in general not military,
was seized with an access of heroism; without a regular army, without
generals, without tactics, it conquered the Seleucidæ, maintained its
revealed rights, and created a second period of autonomy. The Asmonean
royalty, nevertheless, was always distracted by profound interior vices.
It endured but one century. The destiny of the Jewish people was not to
constitute a separate nationality. That people dreamed always of
something international. Its ideal was not the city, it was the
synagogue, the free congregation. The same is true of the Islam, which
has created an immense empire, but has destroyed all nationality, in the
sense in which we understand it, among the peoples which it has
subjugated, and leaves them no other country than the mosque and the
_Zaouia_.
The name of theocracy is often applied to such a social condition, and
rightly so, if we mean by it that the profound idea of the Semitic
religions, and of the empires which came out from them, is the kingdom
of God considered as the master of the world, and universal suzerain.
But theocracy with these nations was not synonymous with the domination
of priests. The priest, properly speaking, plays an unimportant _rôle_
in the history of Judaism and Islamism. The power belongs to the
representative of God,--to him whom God inspires, to the prophet, to the
holy man, to him who has received his mission from Heaven, and who
proves his mission by a miracle, that is to say, by success. In default
of a prophet, the power belongs to the author of apocalypses, and of
apocryphal books attributed to the ancient prophets, or, better, to the
doctor who interprets the divine law, to the head of the synagogue, and,
still more, to the head of the family who guards the depository of the
law, and transmits it to his children. A civil power, a royalty, has
little to do with such social organization. This organization never
works better than among spread-out peoples, under the rights of
tolerated foreigners, in a grand empire where uniformity does not rule.
It is the nature of Judaism to be politically subordinate, since it
cannot draw from its own bosom a principle of military power. Its
_animus_ has been to form communities with their own laws and their own
magistrates in the midst of other states, until modern liberalism
introduced the principle of the equality of all before the law.
The Roman rule, established in Judæa sixty-three years before Christ by
the armies of Pompey, seemed at first to realize some of the conditions
of Jewish life. Rome at this epoch did not pursue the policy of
assimilating the countries which she annexed to her vast empire. She
robbed them of the right of peace and war, and arrogated to herself only
the arbitration in great political questions.
Under the degenerated remains of the Asmonean dynasty and under the
Herods, the Jewish nation preserved a half independence, in which its
religious state was respected. But the interior feeling of the people
was too strong. Beyond a certain degree of religious fanaticism, man is
ungovernable. It should be said that Rome strove without ceasing to
render her power in the East more effective. The little vassal kingdoms
which she had at first preserved, disappeared day by day, and the
provinces made returns to the empire pure and simple. The administrative
customs of the Romans, even in their most reasonable aspects, were
odious to the Jews. In general, the Romans showed the greatest
condescension to the fastidious scruples of the nation; but that was not
sufficient: things had come to a point where nothing could be done
without touching upon a canonical question. These absolute religions,
like Islamism and Judaism, allow no participation: if they do not reign,
they call themselves persecuted. If they feel themselves protected, they
become exacting, and seek to render life impossible to other worships
about them.
I should depart from my plan if I recounted to you that strange struggle
of which Josephus tells us,--the terror in Jerusalem, Simon Bar-Gioras,
commandant in the city, John of Giscala with his assassins, master of
the temple. Fanatical movements are far from excluding hate, jealousy,
and defiance, from those who take part in them. Very decided and
passionate men associated together ordinarily suspect each other, and in
this there is a force; for reciprocal suspicion establishes terror among
them, binds them as with an iron chain, hinders defections and moments
of weakness. Interest creates the _coterie_. Absolute principles create
division, and inspire the temptation to decimate, to expel, to kill
enemies. Those who judge human affairs superficially believe that a
revolution is quelled when the revolutionists "eat one another," as it
is expressed. It is, on the contrary, a proof that the revolution has
all its energy, that an impersonal ardor presides over it. This is
nowhere more clearly seen than in the terrible drama at Jerusalem. The
actors seem to have entered into the compact of death like some infernal
rounds, in which, according to the belief of the middle ages, Satan was
seen forming a chain to draw into a fantastic gulf numbers of men,
dancing, and holding each other by the hand. So revolution allows no one
to escape from the dance which it leads. Terror is behind the lukewarm.
Turn by turn, exalting some, and exalted by others, they rush into the
abyss. None can recede; for behind each one is a concealed sword, which,
at the moment that he wishes to draw back, forces him to advance.
The strangest thing of all is that these madmen were not wholly wrong.
The fanatics of Jerusalem, who affirmed that Jerusalem was eternal even
while it was burning, were nearer the truth than those who regarded them
as mere assassins. They deceived themselves upon the military question,
but not upon the distant religious result. These troubled days point
out, in fact, the moment when Jerusalem became the spiritual capital of
the world. The Apocalypse, a burning expression of the love which she
inspired, has taken its place among the religious writings of humanity,
and has there consecrated the image of the beloved city. Ah, how
important it is never to predict the future of a saint or a villain, a
fool or a sage! Jerusalem, a city of common people, would have pursued
indefinitely its uninteresting history. It is because it had the
incomparable honor of being the cradle of Christianity, that it was the
victim of the Johns of Giscala, of the Bar-Gioras,--in appearance the
scourges of their country, in reality the instruments of its apotheosis.
These zealots, whom Josephus treats as brigands and assassins, were
politicians of the highest order, but unskilful soldiers: still they
lost heroically a country which could not be saved. They lost a material
city: they established the spiritual reign of Jerusalem, sitting in her
desolation far more glorious than she was in the days of Herod and of
Solomon. What did these conservatives, these Sadducees, really desire?
They wished something mean,--the continuation of a city of priests like
Emesa, Tyane, Comane. Assuredly they did not deceive themselves when
they declared that the surging enthusiasm was the ruin of the nation.
Revolution and Messianism destroyed the national existence of the Jewish
people; but revolution and Messianism were the true vocation of this
people,--that by which they contributed to the universal civilization.