Mendelssohn--A chapter devoted to the memory of a worthy friend.
_Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis?_
The name of Mendelssohn is too well known to the world, to make it
necessary for me here to dwell long on the portraiture of the great
intellectual and moral qualities of this celebrated man of our nation. I
shall sketch merely those prominent features of his portrait, which have
made the strongest impression upon me. He was a good Talmudist, and a
pupil of the celebrated Rabbi Israel, or, as he is otherwise named after
the title of a Talmudic work which he wrote, Nezach Israel (the strength
of Israel),--a Polish rabbi who was denounced for heresy by his
countrymen. This rabbi had, besides his great Talmudic capabilities and
acquirements, a good deal of scientific talent, especially in
mathematics, with which he had attained a thorough acquaintance, even in
Poland, from the few Hebrew writings on this science, as may be seen in
the above-mentioned work. In this work there are introduced solutions of
many important mathematical problems, which are applied either to the
explanation of some obscure passages in the Talmud, or to the
determination of a law. Rabbi Israel of course was more interested in
the extension of useful knowledge among his countrymen than in the
determination of a law, which he used merely as a vehicle for the other.
He showed, for example, that it is not right for the Jews in our part of
the world to turn exactly to the East at prayer; for the Talmudic law
requires them to turn to Jerusalem, and, as our part of the world lies
north-west from Jerusalem, they ought to turn to the south-east. He
shows also how, by means of spherical trigonometry, the required
direction may be determined with the utmost exactness in all parts of
the world, and many other truths of a similar kind. Along with the
celebrated Chief Rabbi Fränkel, he contributed much to develop the great
abilities of Mendelssohn.
Mendelssohn possessed a thorough acquaintance with mathematics; and this
science he valued, not only for its self-evidence, but also as the best
exercise in profound reasoning. That he was a great philosopher, is well
enough known. He was not indeed an originator of new systems; he had
however amended the old systems, especially the Leibnitio-Wolfian, and
had applied it with success to many subjects in philosophy.
It is hard to say whether Mendelssohn was endowed with more acuteness or
with depth of intellect. Both faculties were found united in him in a
very high degree. His exactness in definition and classification, and
his fine distinctions, are evidences of the former talent, while his
profound philosophical treatises afford proofs of the latter.
In his character, as he himself confessed, he was by nature a man of
strong passions, but by long exercise in Stoical morality he had learnt
to keep them under control. A young man, under the impression that
Mendelssohn had done him a wrong, came one day to upbraid him, and
indulged in one impertinence after another. Mendelssohn stood leaning on
a chair, never turned his eye from his visitor, and listened to all his
impertinences with the utmost Stoical patience. After the young man had
vented all his passion, Mendelssohn went to him and said, "Go! You see
that you fail to reach your object here; you can't make me angry." Still
on such occasions Mendelssohn could not conceal his sorrow at the
weakness of human nature. Not infrequently I was myself overheated in my
disputes with him, and violated the respect due to such a man,--a fact
on which I still reflect with remorse.
Mendelssohn possessed deep knowledge of human nature,--a knowledge which
consists not so much in seizing some unconnected features of a
character, and representing them in theatrical fashion, as in
discovering those essential features of a character, from which all the
others may be explained, and in some measure predicted. He was able to
describe accurately all the springs of action and the entire moral
wheelwork of a man, and understood thoroughly the mechanism of the soul.
This gave a character, not only to his intercourse and other dealings
with men, but also to his literary labours.
Mendelssohn understood the useful and agreeable art of throwing himself
into another person's mode of thought. He could thus supply whatever was
deficient, and fill up the gaps in the thoughts of another. Jews newly
arrived from Poland, whose thoughts are for the most part confused, and
whose language is an unintelligible jargon, Mendelssohn could understand
perfectly. In his conversations with them he adopted their expressions
and forms of speech, sought to bring down his mode of thinking to
theirs, and thus to raise theirs to his own.
He understood also the art of finding out the good side of every man and
of every event. Not infrequently, therefore, he found entertainment in
people whose intercourse, owing to the eccentric use of their powers, is
by others avoided; and only downright stupidity and dullness were
offensive to him, though they were so in the highest degree. I was once
an eye-witness of the manner in which he entertained himself with a man
of the most eccentric style of thinking and the most extravagant
behaviour. I lost all patience on the occasion, and after the man was
gone I asked Mendelssohn in wonder, "How could you have anything to do
with this fellow?" "We examine attentively," he said, "a machine whose
construction is unknown to us, and we seek to make intelligible its mode
of working. Should not this man claim a like attention? should we not
seek in the same way to render intelligible his odd utterances, since he
certainly has his springs of action and his wheelwork as well as any
machine?"
In discussion with a reasoner who held stubbornly to a system once
adopted Mendelssohn was stubborn himself, and took advantage of the
slightest inaccuracy in his opponent's way of thinking. On the other
hand, with a more accommodating thinker he was accommodating also, and
used commonly to close the discussion with the words, "We must hold
fast, not to mere words, but to the things they signify."
Nothing was so offensive to him as an _esprit de bagatelle_ or
affectation; with anything of this sort he could not conceal his
displeasure. H---- once invited a party, in which Mendelssohn was the
principal guest, and he entertained them the whole time with talk about
some hobby of his, which was not exactly of the choicest kind.
Mendelssohn showed his displeasure by never deigning to give the
slightest attention to the worthless creature. Madam ---- was a lady who
affected an excess of sensibility, and as is customary with such
characters, used to reproach herself in order to extort praise from
others. Mendelssohn sought to bring her to reason by showing her
impressively how exceptionable her conduct was and how she ought to
think seriously about improvement.
In a disconnected conversation he took little part himself; he acted
rather as observer then, and took pleasure in watching the conduct of
the rest of the company. If, on the other hand, the conversation was
coherent, he took the warmest interest in it himself, and, by a skilful
turn, he could, without interrupting the conversation, give it a useful
direction.
Mendelssohn could never take up his mind with trifles; matters of the
greatest moment kept him in restless activity, such as the principles of
Morals and of Natural Theology, the immortality of the soul, etc. In all
these branches of inquiry, in which humanity is so deeply interested, he
has also, as I hold, done as much as can be done on the principles of
the Leibnitio-Wolfian philosophy. Perfection was the compass which he
had constantly before his eyes, and which directed his course, in all
these investigations. His God is the Ideal of the highest perfection,
and the idea of the highest perfection lies at the basis of his Ethics.
The principle of his Æsthetics is sensuous perfection.
My discussion with him on our first acquaintance referred mainly to the
following points. I was a faithful adherent of Maimonides before I
became acquainted with modern philosophy; and, as such, I insisted on
the negation[55] of all positive attributes to God, inasmuch as these
can be represented by us only as finite. Accordingly I proposed the
following dilemma: Either God is not the absolutely perfect being, in
which case his attributes may by us be not only _conceived_, but also
_known_, that is, represented as realities belonging to an object; or He
_is_ the absolutely perfect being, and then the idea of God is conceived
by us, but its reality is merely _assumed_ as problematic. Mendelssohn,
on the other hand, insisted on the affirmation, with regard to God, of
all realities,--a position which goes very well with the
Leibnitio-Wolfian philosophy, because it requires, in order to prove the
reality of an idea, nothing more than that it is thinkable, that is,
fulfils the law of Non-Contradiction.
My moral theory was then genuine Stoicism. It aimed at the attainment of
free will and the ascendency of reason over the feelings and passions.
It made the highest destination of man to be the maintenance of his
_differentia specifica_, the knowledge of the truth; and all other
impulses, common to us with the irrational animals, were to be put in
operation merely as means to this chief end. The knowledge of the good
was not distinguished by me from the knowledge of the true; for,
following Maimonides, I held the knowledge of the truth to be the
highest good of man. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, maintained that the
idea of perfection, which lies at the basis of Ethics, is of much wider
extent than the mere knowledge of the truth. All natural impulses,
capacities and powers, as something good in themselves (not merely as
means to something good), were to be brought into exercise as realities.
The highest perfection was the idea of the maximum, or the greatest sum,
of these realities.
The immortality of the soul, for me, following Maimonides, consisted in
the union with the Universal Spirit of that part of the faculty of
knowledge which has been brought into exercise, in proportion to the
degree of that exercise; and in accordance with this doctrine I held
those only to be partakers of this immortality, who occupy themselves
with the knowledge of eternal truths, and in the degree in which they do
so. The soul, therefore, must, with the attainment of this high
immortality, lose its individuality. That Mendelssohn, in accordance
with modern philosophy, thought differently on this subject, every one
will readily believe.
His sentiments in reference to revealed or positive religion I can give
here, not as something made known to me by himself, but merely in so far
as I have been able to infer them from his utterances on the subject in
his writings with the assistance of my own reflections. For at that
time, as an incipient freethinker, I explained all revealed religion as
in itself false, and its use, so far as the writings of Mendelssohn had
enabled me to understand it, as merely temporary. Moreover, being a man
without experience, I thought it an easy matter to convince others in
opposition to their firmly rooted habits and long-cherished prejudices,
while I assumed the usefulness of such a reformation to be undoubted.
Mendelssohn therefore was unable to hold any conversation with me on the
subject, since he could not but fear lest, as has happened, and happens
still, in the case of several others, I should pronounce his arguments
in reply to be mere pieces of sophistry, and should attribute motives to
him on that account. From his utterances, however, in the preface to his
_Manasseh ben Israel_ as well as in his _Jerusalem_, it is clear that,
though he did not consider any revealed _doctrines_ to be eternal
truths, yet he accepted revealed laws of religion as such, and that he
held the laws of the Jewish religion, as the fundamental laws of a
theocratic constitution, to be immutable as far as circumstances allow.
So far as I am concerned, I am led to assent entirely to Mendelssohn's
reasoning by my own reflections on the fundamental laws of the religion
of my fathers. The fundamental laws of the Jewish religion are at the
same time the fundamental laws of the Jewish state. They must therefore
be obeyed by all who acknowledge themselves to be members of this state,
and who wish to enjoy the rights granted to them under condition of
their obedience. But, on the other hand, any man who separates himself
from this state, who desires to be considered no longer a member of it,
and to renounce all his rights as such, whether he enters another state
or betakes himself to solitude, is also in his conscience no longer
bound to obey those laws. I assent moreover to Mendelssohn's remark,
that a Jew cannot, by simply passing over to the Christian religion,
free himself from the laws of his own religion, because Jesus of
Nazareth observed these laws himself and commanded his followers to
observe them. But how, if a Jew wishes to be no longer a member of this
theocratic state, and goes over to the heathen religion, or to the
philosophical, which is nothing more than pure natural religion? How,
if, merely as a member of a political state, he submits to its laws, and
demands from it his rights in return, without making any declaration
whatever about his religion, since the state is reasonable enough not to
require from him a declaration with which it has nothing to do? I do not
believe Mendelssohn would maintain that even in this case a Jew is bound
in conscience to observe the laws of his fathers' religion merely
because it is the religion of his fathers. As far as is known,
Mendelssohn lived in accordance with the laws of his religion.
Presumably, therefore, he always regarded himself as still a member of
the theocratic state of his fathers, and consequently acted up to his
duty in this respect. But any man who abandons this state is acting just
as little in violation of his duty.
On the other hand I consider it wrong in Jews, who from family
attachments and interests profess the Jewish religion, to transgress its
laws, where, according to their own opinion, these do not stand in the
way of those motives. I cannot therefore understand the conduct of
Mendelssohn in reference to a Jew of Hamburg who openly transgressed
the laws of his religion, and who was on that account excommunicated by
the chief rabbi. Mendelssohn wanted to cancel the excommunication on the
ground that the church has no rights in civil matters. But how can he
then maintain the perpetuity of the Jewish ecclesiastical state? For
what is a state without rights, and wherein consists, according to
Mendelssohn, the rights of this ecclesiastical state? "How," says
Mendelssohn, (in the preface to _Manasseh ben Israel_, p. 48), "can a
state allow one of its useful and respected citizens to suffer
misfortune through its laws?" Surely not, I reply; but the Hamburg Jew
suffers no misfortune by virtue of the excommunication. He required only
to say or do nothing which legally leads to this result, and he would
then have avoided the sentence. For excommunication is merely tantamount
to saying:--"So long as you put yourself in opposition to the laws of
our communion, you are excluded from it; and you must therefore make up
your mind whether this open disobedience or the privileges of our
communion can most advance your blessedness." This surely cannot have
escaped a mind like Mendelssohn's, and I leave it to others to decide
how far a man may be inconsistent for the sake of human welfare.
Mendelssohn had to endure many an injustice at the hands of otherwise
estimable men, from whom such treatment might least have been expected.
Lavater's officiousness is well enough known, and disapproved by all
right-thinking men.[56] The profound Jacobi had a predilection for
Spinozism, with which surely no independent thinker can find fault, and
wanted to make out Mendelssohn, as well as his friend Lessing, to be
Spinozists, in spite of themselves. With this view he published a
correspondence on the subject, which was never intended to appear in
print, and be subjected to public inspection. What was the use of this?
If Spinozism is true, it is so without Mendelssohn's assent. Eternal
truths have nothing to do with the majority of votes, and least of all
where, as I hold, the truth is of such a nature, that it leaves all
expression behind.
Such an injustice must have given Mendelssohn much annoyance. A
celebrated physician maintained even, that it caused his death; but,
though I am not a physician, I venture to gainsay the assertion.
Mendelssohn's conduct in relation to Jacobi, as well as to Lavater, was
that of a hero. No, no! this hero died in the fifth act.
The acute preacher, Jacob, in Halle published, after Mendelssohn's
death, a book entitled, _Examination of Mendelssohn's Morgenstunden_, in
which he shows that, according to the _Critique of Pure Reason_, all
metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as baseless. But why does this
concern Mendelssohn more than any other metaphysician? Mendelssohn did
nothing but develop to greater completeness the Leibnitio-Wolfian
philosophy, apply it to many important subjects of human inquiry, and
clothe it in an attractive garb. It is just as if any one were to attack
Maimonides, who has written an excellent astronomical treatise on
Ptolemaic principles, by writing a book with the title, _Examination of
the Hilchoth Kidush Hakodesh of Maimonides_, in which he should seek to
refute his author on Newtonian principles! But enough of this.