their religion and law and moral life mingled as the stream of blood in
the heart and made one growth--where else a people who kept and
enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they were hunted
with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast
from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman that, swimming to save
his life, he held the roll of his writings between his teeth and saved
them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our race?
They struggled to keep their place among the nations like heroes--yea,
when the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but when the
plow and the harrow had passed over the last visible signs of their
national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with
the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, 'The spirit is alive,
let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because movable--so that
it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn
may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on
an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though
often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded
amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the
Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of
them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he
diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines
of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The native spirit
of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed,
and draw out the compressed virtues of law and prophecy."
Then Mordecai unfolds his theory of national unity and of a regenerated
national life; and it is impossible to read his words attentively without
accepting them as an expression of George Eliot's own personal convictions.
As an embodiment of her conception of the functions of national life they
are full of interest aside from their place in the novel.
"In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our
rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity, the soul of Judaism
is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which
has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality.
Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the
ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a
voice among the peoples of the East and the West--which will plant the
wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, us of old, a medium of
transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living
warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition
will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the
illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge
alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.... The effect of our
separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation
unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is
the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people,
whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me
that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the
children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as
a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar;
they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled
breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the
learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the
political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which
has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the 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 hard but glorious like
that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the
long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness,
refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the
soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill 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 Christian Europe tingle
with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk
gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena?
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 of
protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our
ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western
freedom amidst the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an
organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the
outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the
outraged Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Israel
gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East which
carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its
bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a
neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West. Difficulties? I
know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement
move in the great among our people, and the work will begin....
"What is needed is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The
heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in
their veins as a power without understanding, like the morning
exultation of herds; it is the inborn half of memory, moving as in a
dream among writings on the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot
divide into speech. Let the torch of visible community be lighted! Let
the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let
there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a
nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth,
even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar,
but who still have a national hearth, and a tribunal of national
opinion. Will any say, 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinoza had not a
faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect
at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's nakedness
and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' Yet Baruch
Spinoza confessed he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen
nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are dead?
Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and
Home, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe
and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dug
from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver
in millions of human frames....
"I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but
the good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our
religious life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of
aught but wrong. The masters have said an offence against man is worse
than an offence against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the
breasts of Jews who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what
wonder, since there is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Our
national life was a growing light. Let the central fire be kindled
again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our
race will learn to think of their sacred land not as a place for
saintly beggary to await death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic
where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the
old, purified, enriched by the experience our greatest sons have
gathered from the life of the ages. How long is it?--only two centuries
since a vessel earned over the ocean the beginning of the great North
American nation. The people grew like meeting waters; they were various
in habit and sect. There came a time, a century ago, 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 by the 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 vision of a
better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art
and wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised between East and West--a
covenant of reconciliation. Will any say the prophetic vision of your
race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry; the angel of
progress hag no message for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the
paid workers to lay open--the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken
field? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human
choice. The sons of Judah have to choose, that God may again choose
them. The Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the
planting of the national ensign. The Nile overflowed and rushed onward;
the Egyptian could not choose the overflow, but he chose to work and
make channels for the fructifying waters, and Egypt became the land of
corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and
resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or
purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine principle
of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the
blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future
of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us be 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 brotherhood with
the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there: it will be
fulfilled."
These words put into the mouth of Mordecai, indicate how thoroughly George
Eliot entered into the spirit of Judaism. She read Hebrew with ease, and
had delved extensively in Jewish literature, besides being familiar with
the monumental works in German devoted to Jewish history and opinions. The
religious customs, the home life, the peculiar social habits of the race,
she carefully studied. The accuracy of her information has been pointed out
by her Jewish critics, by whom the book has been praised with the utmost
enthusiasm. One of these, Prof. David Kaufmann, of Buda-Pesth, in an
excellent notice of _Daniel Deronda_, bears testimony to the author's
learning and to the faithfulness of her Jewish portraitures. He says that,
"led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish
national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish characters,
and to recognize and give presentment to the influences which Jewish
education is wont to exercise--to prove by types that Judaism is an
intellectual and spiritual force, still misapprehended and readily
overlooked, but not the less an effective power, for the future of which it
is good assurance that it possesses in the body of its adherents a noble,
susceptible and pliant material which only awaits its final casting to
appear in a glorious form." He also says of the author's learning, that it
is loving and exact, that her descriptions of Jewish life are always
faithful and her characters true to nature.
"Leader of the present so-called realistic school, our author keeps up in
this work the reputation she has won of possessing the most minute
knowledge of the subjects she handles, by the manner in which she has
described the Jews--the great unknown of humanity. She has penetrated into
their history and literature affectionately and thoroughly; and her
knowledge in a field where ignorance is still venial if not expressly
authorized, has astonished even experts. In her selection of almost always
unfamiliar quotations, she shows a taste and a facility of reference really
amazing. When shall we see a German writer exhibiting the courteous
kindliness of George Eliot, who makes Deronda study Zunz's _Synagogale
Poesie_, and places the monumental words which open his chapter entitled
'Leiden,' at the head of the passage in which she introduces us to Ezra
Cohen's family, and at the club-meeting at which Mordecai gives utterance
to his ideas concerning the future of Israel? She is familiar with the
views of Jehuda-ha-Levi as with the dreams and longings of the cabalists,
and as conversant with the splendid names of our Hispano--Arabian epoch as
with the moral aphorisms of the Talmud and the subtle meaning contained in
Jewish legends.... It is by the piety and tenderness with which she treats
Jewish customs that the author shows how supreme her cultivation and
refinement are; and the small number of mistakes which can be detected in
her descriptions of Jewish life and ritual may put to blush even writers
who belong to that race." Again this critic says of the visionary Mordecai,
who has been pronounced a mere dreamer and untrue to nature, that he is an
altogether probable character and portrayed with a true realistic touch."
Mordecai is carved of the wood from which prophets are made, and so far as
the supersensuous can be rendered intelligible, it may even be said that in
studying him we are introduced into a studio or workshop of the prophetic
mind. He is one of the most difficult as well as one of the most successful
essays in psychological analysis ever attempted by an author; and in his
wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or
reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic
profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united
to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making
Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy
of commoner metal, and by giving the angelic likeness features which are
familiar to us all."
Another Jew has borne equally hearty testimony to the faithfulness with
which George Eliot has described Jewish life and the spirit of the Jewish
religion. "She has acquired," this writer says, "an extended and profound
knowledge of the rites, aspirations, hopes, fears and desires of the
Israelites of the day. She has read their books, inquired into their modes
of thought, searched their traditions, accompanied them to the synagogue;
nay, she has taken their very words from their lips, and, like Asmodeus,
has unroofed their houses. To say that some slight errors have crept into
_Daniel Deronda_ is to say that no human work is perfect; and these
inaccuracies are singularly few and unimportant." [Footnote: James
Picciotto, author of "sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," in the Gentleman's
Magazine for November, 1876.] Still another Jewish critic says that in her
gallery of portraits she "gives in a marvellously full and accurate way all
the many sides of the Jewish complex national character." He also says that
Mordecai is a true successor of the prophets and moral leaders of the race,
that the national spirit and temper are truly represented in him.
[Footnote: Joseph Jacobs, in Macmillian's Magazine for 1877.]
That the main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is not that of defending Judaism,
must be apparent to every attentive reader. The Jewish race is made use of
for purposes of illustration, as a notable example in proof of her
theories. There is a deeper purpose conspicuous throughout the hook, which
rests on her conceptions of the spiritual life as a development of
tradition. This larger purpose also jests on her altruistic conception of
the moral and spiritual life. As Professor Kaufmann has pointed out, the
story falls into two widely separated portions, in one of which the Jewish
element appears, in the other the English. Jewish life and its religious
spirit are contrasted with English life and a common type of its religion.
This is not a contrast, however, which is introduced for the purpose of
disparaging Christianity or English social life, but with the object of
comparing those whose life is anchored in the spiritual traditions of a
great people, with those who find the centre of their life in egotism and
an individualistic spirit. Grandcourt is a type of pure egotism; Gwendolen
is a creature who lives for self and with no law outside of her own
happiness. This is the spirit of the society in which they both move. On
the other hand, Mordecai lives in his race, Deronda gives his life
constantly away for others, and Mirah is unselfishness and simplicity
itself. So distinctly is this contrast drawn, so clearly are these two
phases of life brought over against each other, that the book seems to be
divided in the middle, and to be two separate works joined by a slender
thread. This artistic arrangement has been severely criticised, but its
higher purpose is only understood when this comparison and antagonism is
recognized. Then the true artistic arrangement vindicates itself, and the
unity of the book becomes apparent. Deronda moves in both these worlds, and
their influence on him is finely conceived. He finds no spiritual aim and
motive for his life until he is led into the charmed circle of a
traditional environment, and learns to live in and for his race. Living for
self, the life of Gwendolen is blasted, her hopes crushed, and she finds no
peace or promise except in the steadfast spiritual strength yielded her by
Deronda. That such a contrasting of the two great phases of life was a part
of George Eliot's purpose she has herself acknowledged. A comparison of the
spiritual histories of Gwendolen and Deronda will show how earnest was this
purpose of the author. Gwendolen is a type of those souls who have no
spiritual anchorage in the religious life and traditions of their people.
At the opening of chapter third we are told she had no home memories, that
"this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been wanting
in Gwendolen's life." At the end of the sixth chapter we are also told that
she had no insight into spiritual realities, that the bonds of spiritual
power and moral retribution had not been made apparent to her mind.
Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers,
both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her
ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of
circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of
twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as
in any position which would lack the tribute of respect. She had no
permanent consciousness of other fetters, or of more spiritual
restraints, having always disliked whatever was presented to her under
the name of religion, in the same way that some people dislike
arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her, no
alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it, had
not occurred to her, any more than it had occurred to her to inquire
into the conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she
had had many opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was
dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been ready to
admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state. What she
unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad for others to be
unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual dread,
though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into
connection with the religion taught her, or with any human relations.
She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in
remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for
example, she was walking without companionship and there came some
rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her
with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in
the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself.
The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her
imagination at work in a way that made her tremble; but always when
some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in
which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world, in which
her will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to
this world was no more identified for her with those uneasy impressions
of awe than her uncle's surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With
human ears and eyes about her, she had always hitherto recovered her
confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire.
Her difficulties all came out of this egoistic spirit, this want of
spiritual anchorage and religious faith. Gradually her bitter experiences
awakened in her a desire for a purer life, and the influence of Deronda
worked powerfully in the same direction. She is to be regarded, however, as
simply a representative of that social, moral and spiritual life bred in
our century by the disintegrating forces everywhere at work. No moral
ideal, no awe of the divine Nemesis, no spiritual sympathy with the larger
life of the race, is to be found in her thought. The radicalism of the
time, which neglects religious training, which scorns the life of the past,
which lives for self and culture, is destroying all that is best in modern
society. Gwendolen is one of the results of these processes, an example of
that impoverished life which is so common, arising from religious rebellion
and egotism.
Another motive and spirit is represented in the character of Deronda. As a
boy, his mind was full of ideal aspirations, he was chivalrous and eager to
help and comfort others. He would take no mean advantages in his own
behalf, he loved the comradeship of those whom he could help, he was always
ready with his sympathy.
He was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those
heights.
He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means
whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for
comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge
that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving
after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness.
Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those
which helped to form Gwendolen's character, yet a very different result was
produced in him because of his _inherited_ tendencies of mind. After he had
seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai,--
"It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited
yearning--the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in my ancestors--
thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather.
Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a
city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and
born blind--the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing
for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their
inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument
never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious
moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives
music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I
began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task in
which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude--some
social captainship which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven
for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for
me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy."
This inherited sense of a larger life made Deronda what he was, and
developed in him qualities absent in Gwendolen. This inherited power made
him a new Mazzini, a born leader of men, a new saviour of society, a
personal magnet to attract and inspire other souls. A magnetic power of
influence drew Gwendolen to him from the first time they met, he shamed her
narrow life by his silent presence, and he quickened to life in her a
desire for a purer and nobler existence. George Eliot probably meant to
indicate in his character her conception of the true social reformation
which is needed to-day, and how it is to be brought about. The basis on
which it is to be built is the traditional and inherited life of the past,
inspired with new energies and meanings by the gifted souls who have
inherited a large and pure personality, and who are inspired by a quickened
sense of what life ought to be. On the one side a life of altruism, on the
other a life of egotism, teach that the liner social and moral qualities
come out of an inheritance in the national ideals and conquests of a worthy
people, while the coarser qualities come of the neglect of this source of
spiritual power and sustenance. Two letters written to Professor David
Kaufmann indicate that this was the purpose of the hook. At the same time,
they show George Eliot's mind on other sides, and give added insights into
her character. As an indication of her attitude towards Judaism, and her
faith in the work she had done in Daniel Deronda, they are of great value.
THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK,
May 31, '77.
MY DEAR SIR,--Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper
satisfaction, I may say a more heartfelt joy, than you have given me in
your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_. [Footnote: George Eliot and Judaism: an
Attempt to Appreciate Daniel Deronda. By Prof. David Kaufmann, of the
Jewish Theological Seminary, Buda-Pesth.]