But superstition and ignorance were not yet unhorsed. The Jewish
police-officers, though they allowed coach-gentry to enter and take up
their quarters where they pleased, did not fail to pry into their
affairs the next day, as well for the protection of the Jewish
community against equivocal intruders as in accordance with its
responsibility to the State.
In his modest lodging on the New-Market, Maimon had to face the
suspicious scrutiny of the most dreaded of these detectives, who was
puzzled and provoked by a belief he had seen him before, "evidently
looking on me," as Maimon put it afterwards, "as a comet, which comes
nearer to the earth the second time than the first, and so makes the
danger more threatening."
Of a sudden this lynx-eyed bully espied a Hebrew Logic by Maimonides,
annotated by Mendelssohn. "Yes! yes!" he shrieked; "that's the sort of
books for me!" and, glaring threateningly at the philosopher, "Pack,"
he said. "Pack out of Berlin as quick as you can, if you don't wish to
be led out with all the honors."
Maimon was once more in desperate case. His money was all but
exhausted by the journey, and the outside of the Rosenthaler gate
again menaced him. All his sufferings had availed him nothing: he was
back almost at his starting-point.
But fortune favors fools. In a countryman settled at Berlin he found a
protector. Then other admirers of talent and learning boarded and
lodged him. The way was now clear for Culture.
Accident determined the line of march. Maimon rescued Wolff's
_Metaphysics_ from a butterman for two groschen. Wolff, he knew, was
the pet philosopher of the day. Mendelssohn himself had been inspired
by him--the great brother-Jew with whom he might now hope some day to
talk face to face.
Maimon was delighted with his new treasure--such mathematical
exposition, such serried syllogisms--till it came to theology. "The
Principle of Sufficient Reason"--yes, it was a wonderful discovery.
But as proving God? No--for that there was _not_ Sufficient Reason.
Nor could Maimon harmonize these new doctrines with his Maimonides or
his Aristotle. Happy thought! He would set forth his doubts in Hebrew,
he would send the manuscript to Herr Mendelssohn. Flushed by the hope
of the great man's acquaintance, he scribbled fervidly and posted the
manuscript.
He spent a sleepless night.
Would the lion of Berlin take any notice of an obscure Polish Jew?
Maimon was not left in suspense. Mendelssohn replied by return. He
admitted the justice of his correspondent's doubts, but begged him not
to be discouraged by them, but to continue his studies with unabated
zeal. O, judge in Israel! _Nathan Der Weise_, indeed.
Fired with such encouragement, Maimon flung himself into a Hebrew
dissertation that should shatter all these theological cobwebs, that
by an uncompromising Ontology should bring into doubt the foundations
of Revealed as well as of Natural Theology. It was a bold thing to do,
for since he was come to Berlin, and had read more of his books, he
had gathered that Mendelssohn still professed Orthodox Judaism. A
paradox this to Maimon, and roundly denied as impossible when he first
heard of it. A man who could enter the lists with the doughtiest
champions of Christendom, whose German prose was classical, who could
philosophize in Socratic dialogue after the fashion of Plato--such a
man a creature of the Ghetto! Doubtless he took his Judaism in some
vague Platonic way; it was impossible to imagine him the literal
bond-slave of that minute ritual, winding phylacteries round his left
arm or shaking himself in a praying-shawl. Anyhow here--in logical
lucid Hebrew--were Maimon's doubts and difficulties. If Mendelssohn
was sincere, let him resolve them, and earn the blessings of a truly
Jewish soul. If he was unable to answer them, let him give up his
orthodoxy, or be proved a fraud and a time-server. _Amicus Mendelssohn
sed magis amica veritas._
In truth there was something irritating to the Polish Jew in the great
German's attitude, as if it held some latent reproach of his own. Only
a shallow thinker, he felt, could combine culture and spiritual
comfort, to say nothing of worldly success. He had read the
much-vaunted _Phoedon_ which Lutheran Germany hailed as a
counterblast to the notorious "Berlin religion," restoring faith to a
despondent world mocked out of its Christian hopes by the fashionable
French wits and materialists under the baneful inspiration of
Voltaire, whom Germany's own Frederick had set on high in his Court.
But what a curious assumption for a Jewish thinker to accept, that
unless we are immortal, our acts in this world are of no consequence!
Was not he, Maimon, leading a high-minded life in pursuit of Truth,
with no such hope? "If our soul were mortal, then Reason would be a
dream, which Jupiter has sent us in order that we might forget our
misery; and we should be like the beasts, only to seek food and die."
Nonsense! Rhetoric! True, his epistles to Lavater were effective
enough, there was courage in his public refusal of Christianity,
nobility in his sentiment that he preferred to shame anti-Jewish
prejudice by character rather than by controversy. He, Maimon, would
prefer to shame it by both. But this _Jerusalem_ of Mendelssohn's!
Could its thesis really be sustained? Judaism laid no yoke upon
belief, only on conduct? was no reason-confounding dogma? only a
revealed legislation? A Jew gave his life to the law and his heart to
Germany! Or France, or Holland, or the Brazils as the case might be?
Palestine must be forgotten. Well, it was all bold and clever enough,
but was it more than a half-way house to assimilation with the
peoples? At any rate here was a Polish brother's artillery to
meet--more deadly than that of Lavater, or the stupid Christians.
Again, but with acuter anxiety, he awaited Mendelssohn's reply.
It came--an invitation for next Saturday afternoon. Aha! The outworks
were stormed. The great man recognized in him a worthy foe, a brother
in soul. Gratitude and vanity made the visit a delightful
anticipation. What a wit-combat it would be! How he would marshal his
dialectic epigrams! If only Lapidoth could be there to hear!
As the servant threw open the door for him, revealing a suite of
beautiful rooms and a fine company of gentlefolks, men with powdered
wigs and ladies with elegant toilettes, Maimon started back with a
painful shock. An under-consciousness of mud-stained boots and a
clumsily cut overcoat, mixed itself painfully with this impression of
pretty, scented women, and the clatter of tongues and coffee-cups. He
stood rooted to the threshold in a sudden bitter realization that the
great world cared nothing about metaphysics. Ease, fine furniture, a
position in the world--these were the things that counted. Why had all
his genius brought him none of these things? Wifeless, childless,
moneyless, he stood, a solitary soul wrestling with problems. How had
Mendelssohn managed to obtain everything? Doubtless he had had a
better start, a rich father, a University training. His resentment
against the prosperous philosopher rekindled. He shrank back and
closed the door. But it was opened instantly again from within. A
little hunchback with shining eyes hurried towards him.
"Herr Maimon?" he said inquiringly, holding out his hand with a smile
of welcome.
Startled, Maimon laid his hand without speaking in that cordial palm.
So this was the man he had envied. No one had ever told him that
"Nathan der Weise" was thus afflicted. It was as soul that he had
appealed to the imagination of the world; even vulgar gossip had been
silent about his body. But how this deformity must embitter his
success.
Mendelssohn coaxed him within, complimenting him profusely on his
writings: he was only too familiar with these half-shy,
half-aggressive young Poles, whose brains were bursting with heretical
ideas and sick fantasies. They brought him into evil odor with his
orthodox brethren, did these "Jerusalem Werthers," but who should deal
with them, if not he that understood them, that could handle them
delicately? What was to Maimon a unique episode was to his host an
everyday experience.
Mendelssohn led Maimon to the embrasure of a window: he brought him
refreshments--which the young man devoured uncouthly--he neglected his
fashionable guests, whose unceasing French babble proclaimed their
ability to get on by themselves, to gain an insight into this gifted
young man's soul. He regarded each new person as a complicated piece
of wheelwork, which it was the wise man's business to understand and
not be angry with. But having captured the secret of the mechanism, it
was one's duty to improve it on its own lines.
"Your dissertation displays extraordinary acumen, Herr Maimon," he
said. "Of course you still suffer from the Talmudic method or rather
want of method. But you have a real insight into metaphysical
problems. And yet you have only read Wolff! You are evidently not a
_Chamor nosé Sefarim_ (a donkey bearing books)." He used the Hebrew
proverb to make the young Pole feel at home, and a half smile hovered
around his sensitive lips. Even his German took on a winning touch of
jargon in vocabulary and accentuation, though to kill the jargon was
one of the ideals of his life.
"Nay, Herr Mendelssohn," replied Maimon modestly; "you must not forget
_The Guide of the Perplexed_. It was the inspiration of my youth!"
"Was it?" cried Mendelssohn delightedly. "So it was of mine. In fact I
tell the Berliners Maimonides was responsible for my hump, and some of
them actually believe I got it bending over him."
This charming acceptance of his affliction touched the sensitive
Maimon and put him more at ease than even the praise of his writings
and the fraternal vocabulary. "In my country," he said, "a perfect
body is thought to mark the fool of the family! They believe the
finest souls prefer to inhabit imperfect tenements."
Mendelssohn bowed laughingly. "An excellently turned compliment! At
this rate you will soon shine in our Berlin society. And how long is
it since you left Poland?"
"Alas! I have left Poland more than once. I should have had the honor
and the happiness of making your acquaintance earlier, had I not been
stopped at the Rosenthaler gate three years ago."
"At the Rosenthaler gate! If I had only known!"
The tears came into Maimon's eyes--tears of gratitude, of self-pity,
of regret for the lost years. He was on his feet now, he felt, and his
feet were on the right road. He had found a powerful protector at
last. "Think of my disappointment," he said tremulously, "after
travelling all the way from Poland."
"Yes, I know. I was all but stopped at the gate myself," said
Mendelssohn musingly.
"You?"
"Yes--when I was a lad."
"Aren't you a native of Berlin, then?"
"No, I was born in Dessau. Not so far to tramp from as Poland. But
still a goodish stretch. It took me five days--I am not a Hercules
like you--and had I not managed to stammer out that I wished to enrol
myself among the pupils of Dr. Frankel, the new Chief Rabbi of the
city, the surly Cerberus would have slammed the gate in my face. My
luck was that Frankel had come from Dessau, and had been my teacher. I
remember standing on a hillock crying as he was leaving for Berlin,
and he took me in his arms and said I should also go to Berlin some
day. So when I appeared he had to make the best of it."
"Then you had nothing from your parents?"
"Only a beautiful handwriting from my father which got me copying jobs
for a few groschens and is now the joy of the printers. He was a
scribe, you know, and wrote the Scrolls of the Law. But he wanted me
to be a pedlar."
"A pedlar!" cried Maimon, open-eyed.
"Yes, the money would come in at once, you see. I had quite a fight to
persuade him I would do better as a Rabbi. I fear I was a very violent
and impatient youngster. He didn't at all believe in my Rabbinical
future. And he was right after all--for a member of a learned guild,
Jewish or Christian, have I never been."
"You had a hard time, then, when you came to Berlin?" said Maimon
sympathetically.
Mendelssohn's eyes had for an instant an inward look, then he quoted
gently, "Bread with salt shalt thou eat, water by measure shalt thou
drink, upon the hard earth shalt thou sleep, and a life of anxiousness
shalt thou live, and labor in the study of the law!"
Maimon thrilled at the quotation: the fine furniture and the fine
company faded, and he saw only the soul of a fellow-idealist to which
these things were but unregarded background.
"Ah yes," went on Mendelssohn. "You are thinking I don't look like a
person who once notched his loaf into sections so as not to eat too
much a day. Well, let it console you with the thought that there's a
comfortable home in Berlin waiting for you, too."
Poor Maimon stole a glance at the buxom, blue-eyed matron doing the
honors of her salon so gracefully, assisted by two dazzling young
ladies in Parisian toilettes--evidently her daughters--and he groaned
at the thought of his peasant-wife and his uncouth, superstition-swaddled
children: decidedly he must give Sarah a divorce.
"I can't delude myself with such day-dreams," he said hopelessly.
"Wait! Wait! So long as you don't day-dream your time away. That is
the danger with you clever young Poles--you are such dreamers.
Everything in this life depends on steadiness and patience. When we
first set up hospitality, Fromet--my wife--and I, we had to count the
almonds and raisins for dessert. You see, we only began with a little
house and garden in the outskirts, the main furniture of which," he
said, laughing at the recollection, "was twenty china apes,
life-size."
"Twenty china apes!"
"Yes, like every Jewish bridegroom, I had to buy a quantity of china
for the support of the local manufactory, and that was what fell to
me. Ah, my friend, what have not the Jews of Germany to support! The
taxes are still with us, but the _Rishus_ (malice)"--again he smiled
confidentially at the Hebrew-jargon word--"is less every day. Why, a
Jew couldn't walk the streets of Berlin without being hooted and
insulted, and my little ones used to ask, 'Father, is it wicked to be
a Jew?' I thank the Almighty that at the end of my days I have lived
to see the Jewish question raised to a higher plane."
"I should rather thank _you_," cried Maimon, with sceptical
enthusiasm.
"Me?" said Mendelssohn, with the unfeigned modesty of the man who, his
every public utterance having been dragged out of him by external
compulsion, retains his native shyness and is alone in ignorance of
his own influence. "No, no, it is Montesquieu, it is Dohm, it is my
dear Lessing. Poor fellow, the Christian bigots are at him now like a
plague of stinging insects. I almost wish he hadn't written _Nathan
der Weise_. I am glad to reflect I didn't instigate him, nay, that he
had written a play in favor of the Jews ere we met."
"How did you come to know him?"
"I hardly remember. He was always fond of outcasts--a true artistic
temperament, that preferred to consort with actors and soldiers rather
than with the beer-swilling middle-class of Berlin. Oh yes, I think we
met over a game of chess. Then we wrote an essay on Pope together.
Dear Gotthold! What do I not owe him? My position in Berlin, my
feeling for literature--for we Jews have all stifled our love for the
beautiful and grown dead to poetry."
"Well, but what is a poet but a liar?"
"Ah, my dear Herr Maimon, you will grow out of that. I must lend you
Homer. Intellectual speculation is not everything. For my part, I have
never regretted withdrawing a portion of my love from the worthy
matron, philosophy, in order to bestow it on her handmaid,
_belles-lettres_. I am sorry to use a French word, but for once
there's no better. You smile to see a Jew more German than the
Germans."
"No, I smile to hear what sounds like French all round! I remember
reading in your _Philosophical Conversations_ your appeal to the
Germans not to exchange their own gold for the tinsel of their
neighbors."
"Yes, but what can one do? It is a Berlin mania; and, you know, the
King himself.... Our Jewish girls first caught it to converse with the
young gallants who came a-borrowing of their fathers, but the
influence of my dear daughters--there, the beautiful one is Dorothea,
the eldest, and that other, who takes more after me, is
Henrietta--their influence is doing much to counteract the wave of
flippancy and materialism. But fancy any one still reading my
_Philosophical Conversations_--my 'prentice work. I had no idea of
printing it. I lent the manuscript to Lessing, observing jestingly
that I, too, could write like Shaftesbury, the Englishman. And lo! the
next time I met him he handed me the proofs. Dear Gotthold."
"Is it true that the King--?"
"Sent for me to Potsdam to scold me? You are thinking of another
matter. That was in my young days." He smiled and lowered his voice.
"I ventured to hint in a review that His Majesty's French verses--I am
glad by the way he has lived to write some against Voltaire--were not
perfection. I thought I had wrapped up my meaning beyond royal
comprehension. But a malicious courtier, the preacher Justi, denounced
me as a Jew who had thrown aside all reverence for the most sacred
person of His Majesty. I was summoned to Sans-Souci and--with a touch
of _Rishus_ (malice)--on a Saturday. I managed to be there without
breaking my _Shabbos_ (Sabbath)."
"Then he does keep Sabbath!" thought Maimon, in amaze.
"But, as you may imagine, I was not as happy as a bear with honey.
However, I pleaded that he who makes verses plays at nine-pins, and he
who plays at nine-pins, be he monarch or peasant, must be satisfied
with the judgment of the boy who has charge of the bowls."
"And you are still alive!"
"To the annoyance of many people. I fancy His Majesty was ashamed to
punish me before the French cynics of his court, and I know on good
authority that it was because the Marquis D'Argens was astonished to
learn that I could be driven out of Berlin at any moment by the police
that the King made me a Schutz-Jude (protected Jew). So I owe
something to the French after all. My friends had long been urging me
to sue for protection, but I thought, as I still think, that one ought
not to ask for any rights which the humblest Jew could not enjoy.
However, a king's gift horse one cannot look in the mouth. And now you
are to become _my_ Schutz-Jude"--Maimon's heart beat gratefully--"and
the question is, what do you propose to do in Berlin? What is the
career that is to bring you a castle and a princess?"
"I wish to study medicine."
"Good. It is the one profession a Jew may enter here; though, you must
know, however great a practice you may attain--even among the
Christians--they will never publish your name in the medical list.
Still, we must be thankful for small mercies. In Frankfort the Jewish
doctors are limited to four, in other towns to none. We must hand you
over to Dr. Herz--there, that man who is laughing so, over one of his
own good things, no doubt--that is Dr. Herz, and the beautiful
creature is his wife, Henrietta, who is founding a Goethe salon. She
and my daughters are inseparable--a Jewish trinity. And so, Herr
Physician, I extend to you the envious congratulations of a
book-keeper."
"But you are not a book-keeper!"
"Not now, but that was what I began as--or rather, what I drifted
into, for I was Talmudical tutor in his family, when my dear Herr
Bernhardt proposed it to me. And I am not sorry. For it left me plenty
of time to learn Latin and Greek and mathematics, and finally landed
me in a partnership. Still I have always been a race-horse burdened
with a pack, alas! I don't mean my hump, but the factory still steals
a good deal of my time and brains, and if I didn't rise at five--But
you have made me quite egoistic--it is the resemblance of our young
days that has touched the spring of memories. But come! let me
introduce you to my wife and my son Abraham. Ah, see, poor Fromet is
signalling to me. She is tired of being left to battle single-handed.
Would you not like to know M. de Mirabeau? Or let me introduce you to
Wessely--he will talk to you in Hebrew. It is Wessely who does all the
work for which I am praised--it is he who is elevating our Jewish
brethren, with whom I have not the heart nor the courage to strive. Or
there is Nicolai, the founder of 'The Library of the Fine Arts,' to
which," he added with a sly smile, "I hope yet to see you
contributing. Perhaps Fräulein Reimarus will convert you--that
charming young lady there talking with her brother-in-law, who is a
Danish state-councillor. She is the great friend of Lessing--as I
live, there comes Lessing himself. I am sure he would like the
pleasure of your acquaintance."
"Because he likes outcasts? No, no, not yet," and Maimon, whose mood
had been growing dark again, shrank back, appalled by these great
names. Yes, he was a dreamer and a fool, and Mendelssohn was a sage,
indeed. In his bitterness he distrusted even his own Dissertation, his
uncompromising logic, destructive of all theology. Perhaps Mendelssohn
was right: perhaps he had really solved the Jewish problem. To be a
Jew among Germans, and a German among Jews: to reconcile the old creed
with Culture: to hold up one's head, and assert oneself as an
honorable element in the nation--was not this catholic gathering a
proof of the feasibility of such an ideal? Good sense! What true
self-estimate as well as wit in the sage's famous retort to the
swaggering German officer who asked him what commodity he dealt in.
"In that which you appear to need--good sense." Maimon roused himself
to listen to the conversation. It changed to German under the impulse
of the host, who from his umpire's chair controlled it with play of
eye, head, or hand; and when appealed to, would usually show that both
parties were fighting about words, not things. Maimon noted from his
semi-obscure retreat that the talk grew more serious and connected,
touched problems. He saw that for Mendelssohn as for himself nothing
really existed but the great questions. Flippant interruptions the
sage seemed to disregard, and if the topic dribbled out into
irrelevancies he fell silent. Maimon studied the noble curve of his
forehead, the decided nose, the prominent lips, in the light of Herr
Lavater's theories. Lessing said little: he had the air of a broken
man. The brilliant life of the culture-warrior was closing in
gloom--wife, child, health, money, almost reputation, gone: the
nemesis of genius.
At one point a lady strove to concentrate attention upon herself by
accusing herself of faults of character. Even Maimon understood she
was angling for compliments. But Mendelssohn gravely bade her mend her
faults, and Maimon saw Lessing's harassed eyes light up for the first
time with a gleam of humor. Then the poet, as if roused to
recollection, pulled out a paper, "I almost forgot to give you back
Kant's letter," he said. "You are indeed to be congratulated."
Mendelssohn blushed like a boy, and made a snatch at the letter, but
Lessing jestingly insisted on reading it to the company.
"I consider that in your _Jerusalem_ you have succeeded in combining
our religion with such a degree of freedom of conscience, as was never
imagined possible, and of which no other faith can boast. You have at
the same time so thoroughly and so clearly demonstrated the necessity
of unlimited liberty of conscience, that ultimately our Church will
also be led to reflect how it should remove from its midst everything
that disturbs and oppresses conscience, which will finally unite all
men in their view of the essential points of religion."
There was an approving murmur throughout the company. "Such a letter
would compensate me for many more annoyances than my works have
brought me," said Mendelssohn. "And to think," he added laughingly,
"that I once beat Kant in a prize competition. A proof of the power of
lucid expression over profound thought. And that I owe to your
stimulus, Lessing."
The poet made a grimace. "You accuse me of stimulating
superficiality!"
There was a laugh.
"Nay, I meant you have torn away the thorns from the roses of
philosophy! If Kant would only write like you--"
"He might understand himself," flashed the beautiful Henrietta Herz.
"And lose his disciples," added her husband. "That is really, Herr
Mendelssohn, why we pious Jews are so angry with your German
translation of the Bible--you make the Bible intelligible."
"Yes, they have done their best to distort it," sighed Mendelssohn.
"But the fury my translation arouses among the so-called wise men of
the day, is the best proof of its necessity. When I first meditated
producing a plain Bible in good German, I had only the needs of my own
children at heart, then I allowed myself to be persuaded it might serve
the multitude, now I see it is the Rabbis who need it most. But
centuries of crooked thinking have deadened them to the beauties of the
Bible: they have left it behind them as elementary, when they have not
themselves coated it with complexity. Subtle misinterpretation is
everything, a beautiful text, nothing. And then this corrupt idiom of
theirs--than which nothing more corrupts a nation--they have actually
invested this German jargon with sanctity, and I am a wolf in sheep's
clothing for putting good German in Hebrew letters. Even the French
Jews, Cerf Berr tells me, think bad German holy. To say nothing of
Austria."
"Wait, wait!" said an eager-eyed man; "the laws of the Emperor Joseph
will change all that--once the Jews of Vienna are forced to go to
school with the sciences, they will become an honored element of the
nation."
Mendelssohn shook a worldly-wise head. "Not so fast, my dear Wessely,
not so fast. Your Hebrew Ode to the Austrian Emperor was unimpeachable
as poetry, but, I fear, visionary as history. Who knows that this is
more than a temporary political move?"
"And we pious Jews," put in Dr. Herz, smiling, "you forget, Herr
Wessely, we are not so easily schooled. We have never forgiven our
Mendelssohn for saying our glorious religion had accumulated cobwebs.
It is the cobwebs we love, not the port."
"Yes, indeed," broke in Maimon, so interested that he forgot his own
jargon, to say nothing of his attire. "When I was in Poland, I crawled
nicely into mud, through pointing out that they ought not to turn to
the east in praying, because Jerusalem, which, in accordance with
Talmudic law, they turned to, couldn't lie due east of everywhere. In
point of fact we were north-west, so that they should have
turned"--his thumbs began to turn and his voice to take on the
Talmudic sing-song--"south-east. I told them it was easy in each city
to compute the exact turning, by corners and circles--"
"By spherical trigonometry, certainly," said Mendelssohn pleasantly.
Maimon, conscious of a correction, blushed and awoke to find himself
the centre of observation. His host made haste to add, "You remind me
of the odium I incurred by agreeing with the Duke of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin's edict, that we should not bury our dead before
the third day. And this in spite of my proofs from the Talmud! Dear,
dear, if the Rabbis were only as anxious to bury dead ideas as dead
bodies!" There was a general smile, but Maimon said boldly--
"I think you treat them far too tolerantly."
"What, Herr Maimon," and Mendelssohn smiled the half-sad smile of the
sage, who has seen the humors of the human spectacle and himself as
part of it--"would you have me rebuke intolerance by intolerance? I
will admit that when I was your age--and of an even hotter temper--I
could have made a pretty persecutor. In those days I contributed to
the mildest of sheets, 'The Moral Preacher,' we young blades called
it. But because it didn't reek of religion, on every page the pious
scented atheism. I could have whipped the dullards or cried with
vexation. Now I see intolerance is a proof of earnestness as well as
of stupidity. It is well that men should be alert against the least
rough breath on the blossoms of faith they cherish. The only criticism
that still has power to annoy me is that of the timid, who fear it is
provoking persecution for a Jew to speak out. But for the rest,
opposition is the test-furnace of new ideas. I do my part in the
world, it is for others to do theirs. As soon as I had yielded my
translation to friend Dubno, to be printed, I took my soul in my
hands, raised my eyes to the mountains, and gave my back to the
smiters. All the same I am sorry it is the Rabbi of Posen who is
launching these old-fashioned thunders against the German Pentateuch
of "Moses of Dessau," for both as a Talmudist and mathematician
Hirsch Janow has my sincere respect. Not in vain is he styled 'the
keen scholar,' and from all I hear he is a truly good man."
"A saint!" cried Maimon enthusiastically, again forgetting his
shyness. His voice faltered as he drew a glowing panegyric of his
whilom benefactor, and pictured him as about to die in the prime of
life, worn out by vigils and penances. In a revulsion of feeling,
fresh stirrings of doubt of the Mendelssohnian solution agitated his
soul. Though he had but just now denounced the fanatics, he was
conscious of a strange sympathy with this lovable ascetic who fasted
every day, torturing equally his texts and himself, this hopeless
mystic for whom there could be no bridge to modern thought; all the
Polish Jew in him revolted irrationally against the new German
rationalism. No, no; it must be all or nothing. Jewish Catholicism was
not to be replaced by Jewish Protestantism. These pathetic zealots,
clinging desperately to the past, had a deeper instinct, a truer
prevision of the future, than this cultured philosopher.
"Yes, what you tell me of Hirsch Janow goes with all I have heard,"
said Mendelssohn calmly. "But I put my trust in time and the new
generation. I will wager that the translation I drew up for my
children will be read by his."
Maimon happened to be looking over Mendelssohn's shoulder at his
charming daughters in their Parisian toilettes. He saw them exchange a
curious glance that raised their eyebrows sceptically. With a flash of
insight he caught their meaning. Mendelssohn seeking an epigram had
stumbled into a dubious oracle.
"The translation I drew up for my children will be read by his."
By his, perhaps.
But by my own?
Maimon shivered with an apprehension of tragedy. Perhaps it was his
Dissertation that Mendelssohn's children would read. He remembered
suddenly that Mendelssohn had said no word to its crushing logic.
As he was taking his leave, he put the question point-blank. "What
have you to say to my arguments?"
"You are not in the right road at present," said Mendelssohn, holding
his hand amicably, "but the course of your inquiries must not be
checked. Doubt, as Descartes rightly says, is the beginning of
philosophical speculation."
He left the Polish philosopher on the threshold, agitated by a medley
of feelings.