My position keeps me very busy. In a mining district accidents occur
almost daily. Besides, the whisky fiend has to be reckoned with,
leading, as it does, to all sorts of excesses, brawls, and murderous
assaults. Scarcely a day passes but that I have to make trips into the
country, which offers small cheer now in the grey autumn weather and in
this dispiriting region. My disposition, naturally inclined to be
sombre, becomes still more melancholy; and when I ride through the
rain-soaked country, past forges, furnaces, and culm heaps, covered with
a thick pall of smoke, with the immediate prospect of seeing dead or
injured victims, and having to set down a record of human misery and
woe, my mood becomes ever blacker and blacker. I never find time to
attend to patients among the upper classes. I believe I am given up as a
hopeless case--a Jewish Kreisphysikus, sans wife, who doesn't seek
introductions, must be either an abnormality or a capricious, stuck-up
fool, at any rate a person not to be reckoned with seriously. My
colleagues probably have the same opinion of me. After the inevitable
initial formalities, I did not come in contact with them; if chance
brings us together, we give each other a cool if courteous greeting.
This exclusiveness has its advantages. The time left free from my duties
belongs to me entirely, and I do not spend it thriftlessly in society to
which I am indifferent. It has not been my experience that intercourse
with many people is of any profit. One gets so little, and gives so
much, much too much of what is best and noblest in one's nature,
especially if one is a man of feeling, intellect, and ardent
temperament. The strongest chord is almost never touched. In the most
favorable circumstances, the exchange of courtesies is purely formal,
and the acts of friendship are entirely perfunctory. These merely
external amenities make men vulgar and untrue, I would not like to use
an even stronger expression and say dishonest. Heine's words occur to
me:
Weisse, hoefliche Manschetten,
Ach wenn sie nur Herzen haetten,
Herzen in der Brust und Liebe,--wahre Liebe in den Herzen,
Denn mich toetet ihr Gesinge von erlogenen Liebesschmerzen.
Perhaps such principles produce loneliness; but they strengthen one; at
all events they do not embitter the mind and spirit, as some maintain. I
have never been sadder than in the midst of many people, among whom I
did not find--one human being! And nothing has a happier influence on me
than to find a human being where I least expect one--Simon Eichelkatz,
for example.
Yesterday, after an interval of several days, I went to see him late in
the evening. I was worn out and unnerved by my official visit to a
neighboring place, the centre of the Silesian coal-mining district. Two
workmen had gotten into a fight in a tavern, and the host, in trying to
separate them and smooth over their differences, himself became enraged
and threw out the more aggressive of the two. The reeling, sodden wretch
lost his balance, and, tumbling down the steps, knocked his head on a
stone. His skull was crushed, and he died in a few minutes from
contusion of the brain. When I reached the spot, a mob of wild, excited
forms had gathered about the scene of the drama. Policemen stood on
guard; and a cloth covered the corpse, which was not to be disturbed
until after an inspection by the officials of the locality. I could do
nothing more than affirm that the victim was dead, the examination
showed that death had occurred as a result of a fall caused by violent
mishandling. The author of the deed was a Jew. He was immediately
imprisoned, and with great difficulty was withdrawn from the summary
lynch-justice of the enraged crowd. Defrauded of the prisoner, they
turned against his family and his property. The windows of his house
were smashed in; the shop was utterly destroyed, and the whisky--that
ruinous, unholy "dispeller of cares "--flowed from the casks into the
street. His wife and children tried to save their goods and possessions
from the fury of the vandals, but received kicks and blows for their
efforts. It was a horrid scene. The policemen did not succeed in
restoring order and quiet for some time. Is it possible they had not
received sufficient power from the authorities? Was there some other
reason? At any rate I had to interpose and try to allay the turmoil. At
last the crowd dispersed; but ever and again the echo reached my ears of
assassin--murderer--Jew--assassin--dirty thief--cheat--Jew--Jew--liar.
All this had utterly depressed and unnerved me. I really wanted to stay
at home; but I reconsidered and decided it was better to substitute a
pure, peaceful picture for these torturing impressions, and I went to my
old friend. I found him gay and friendly as ever, despite the lateness
of the hour. But my mood did not escape his searching gaze; and on his
questioning me, I told him what had happened. As was his wont, he rubbed
his forehead with his forefinger and thumb, and looked thoughtfully into
space. Finally he said:
"That's the way it is to-day, and that's the way it's always been. If a
man of some other religion commits a wrong, it's a bad man that did it;
but if it happens among our people, then it's the 'Jew'! That's a bitter
pill we have to swallow, Herr Doktor, a very bitter pill. But it _is_
so, and it doesn't change, even though the world is said to be so
cultured and progressive, and humane--the Jew remains a Jew! In the eyes
of the _Goy_ he's something peculiar, something disgraceful! And for
that reason the Jews must stick to the Jew; because the others don't,
and never did, and never will. We have nothing to expect or hope from
them--and we needn't be afraid of them, neither, we Jews, if we stick
together. Then, if something should happen as to-day, Herr
Kreisphysikus, it's a misfortune, but not a calamity. Because the man
who did it, is a wicked brute who by accident is a Jew, and might just
as well have been a Goy. What has religion to do with these matters,
anyhow? Does a Goy do something bad because he's a Christian, or a Jew
because he's an Israelite? Religion teaches both of them to be good,
upright, and pious; and if they aren't, how can religion help it?
Religion is not to be blamed; only good can result from religion.
Whether Jew or Christian, it remains the same. Each can learn from his
own religion; for there is something moral in every religion; and for
that reason everybody should honor his own religion and stick to it. The
deeds of men must be judged according to the nature of each man, not
according to his religion. Because, if the Jew at Raudnitz chucked out
the _Shikker_ so roughly that he died, the Jew did it because he has an
angry, wild, ungovernable temper. Do you suppose he was thinking of his
religion? If he only had! The Shikker would be alive if he had. Because
the Jewish belief forbids the Jew to be sinful or violent, and to kill;
just as their belief forbids the Goyim. And the world won't be better
until all understand that a man must have respect for his neighbor,
because he is a man. When each and everyone feels that he is master of
his honor and his dignity, he will also find his rights--not as a Jew
and not as a Christian, but as a man!"
I stared at the old man fixedly. Whence these ideas on the rights and
dignity of man? Whence these opinions animated by the spirit of
humanitarianism? Here, in the Jewish community? If he had suddenly begun
to unriddle the problem of "the thing in itself," I should scarcely have
been astonished. Notions had arisen in the mind of this simple man, on
the philosophy of human rights and the philosophy of religion, worthy of
a great scholar, although he had never heard a word of the notable
thinkers who had constructed these ideas into an enduring cosmic
edifice.