VI. The French Jews in Relation to the Religion of the Majority of the French

§ 278 Let things only go quietly, is the comforting saying on the standpoint where one would not like to keep the indecision and discomfort of the present forever, but also cannot bring oneself to take the decisive and extreme measure: let things only go quietly by themselves and everything will already make itself. Above all, do not believe that you will be able to accomplish anything with theory. Theory is cruel, inventive in cruelties, and its greatest pleasure is to form collisions out of the slightest difficulties, to draw the lightest entanglements so tightly together until they strangle both parties, in general to drive everything to the peak and to the extreme. Life, on the other hand, is rich in means to circumvent difficulties, to make them harmless and to blunt them; it stills theoretical heat and inflammation and pours oil into the wounds which theory has struck.

§ 279 Thus one will also make our previous exposition the reproach that we have unnecessarily exaggerated the difficulty and left unconsidered all those means in whose possession life is and which it always applies at the right time and applies happily, while theory represents the situation as so dangerous that one should believe that at any moment the darkest tragedy must begin.

§ 280 We by no means despise ordinary life, but it is also not truly to be highly esteemed if we are to esteem highly only that which relates freely and sincerely to its law, i.e., really gives itself the law which expresses its highest consciousness, and really abolishes the law which it in fact disavows; if, therefore, in general only that is worthy of esteem which acknowledges its law.

§ 281 in relation to the religion of the majority of the French.

§ 282 In this sense, so-called ordinary life, to whose wound-healing power the opponents of extreme theory appeal, is not worthy of esteem; it will rather always have to come to a point where it must be despised in the highest degree.

§ 283 With its soporific aids it calms not only the raging and furious theory in general, not only the theory of the thinker, but in this at the same time its own theory. Thus the Christian can show himself benevolent, charitable and philanthropic towards the Jew, i.e., disavow his theory which obliges him as a Christian to have no community with the Jews, and recognise the man in the Jew, i.e., prove himself not as a Christian but as a man. Ordinary life is now so inconsistent that it does not also abolish in law and with complete consciousness its theory and presupposition which it in fact abolishes. Its deed, with which it abolishes its imperfect theory, it does not dare to make into the ruling theory. It lets the law stand which denies the Jew universal human rights, i.e., it is itself incapable of legally recognising the universal right of man; only momentarily and in an accidental excitation of human sympathy does it let the Jew count as a man, but otherwise, in the ruling law and in the legal relations which cannot be regulated according to the accidental caprice of feeling and may not even be abandoned to its exceptional generosity, because they affect the interest of all, not only that of individual sensitive souls — in these relations it retains the cruel theory, and only in this does it remain soft-hearted and faint-hearted, that it cannot bring itself to be so cruel as to abolish the theory of cruelty.

§ 284 Ordinary life can therefore be opposed to theory only insofar as it sometimes, and only for moments, withdraws from its own hard-hearted theory at its surface. At bottom, however, and in its ordinary course, it is ruled by its theory, which can be overcome only by the cruel theory, i.e., by the theory which has the courage to put an end to cruelty.

§ 285 For moments ordinary life stands opposed to its own theory, for ever to the true theory, because even when it once abolishes its own, it fears to recognise this abolition as law and as the true theory.

§ 286 The higher ordinary life stands and the freer it is, the more barbaric it will be and the cruder its theory, if it does not want to recognise the freedom according to which it lives as its highest law.

§ 287 In this case it will not solve the entanglements into which it falls by making freedom into law, but will devise expedients which restrict freedom where life is concerned.

§ 288 The law which is to solve the collision will give the lie to the ruling freedom; a freedom, however, which allows itself to be mocked in this way is, even when it seems to rule in ordinary life, only an appearance.

§ 289 It is not theory that broods over these contradictions from which ordinary life suffers, but life makes them felt; it is not theory that makes the collision dangerous; ordinary life, because it will not confess its contradictions and dissolve them in true theory, opens wounds without binding them, and must perforce confess that the pain-stilling and healing means are lacking to it, so long as it fears the cruel, the extreme.

§ 290 France has recently, in relation to the Jewish question as in all other political questions since the July Revolution, constantly given us the spectacle of a life which is free but revokes its freedom in law, therefore also declares it an appearance, and on the other hand refutes its free law by deed.

§ 291 The July Revolution abolished the state religion as such, emancipated the state from the church, freed it from every ecclesiastical influence, and made participation in all civil and political rights independent of religious and ecclesiastical confession. The French Jews have therefore become completely free citizens and, for example, capable of representing their fellow citizens without distinction of religion in parliament. Herr Fould has made a name for himself as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and the collision with which our theory and practice in Germany is occupied seems thus to be solved.

§ 292 It is, however, not yet really solved, neither in law nor in life.

§ 293 The Jew, for example, would have to have ceased to be a Jew if he does not let himself be prevented by his law from fulfilling his duties towards the state and his fellow citizens, thus, for example, goes to the Chamber of Deputies on the Sabbath and takes part in public proceedings. Every religious privilege in general, therefore also the monopoly of a privileged church, would have to be abolished, and if some or several or even the overwhelming majority believed they had to fulfil religious duties, this fulfilment would have to be left to them as a purely private affair.

§ 294 Universal freedom, however, is not yet law even in France, therefore also not yet solved, because legal freedom (that all citizens are equal) is limited by a life which is still dominated and divided by religious privileges, and this unfreedom of life reacts back on the law and forces it to sanction the distinction of the citizens, who are free in themselves, into oppressed and oppressors.

§ 295 The proceedings of the Chamber of Deputies on the law which was to regulate the working hours for children in the factories gave occasion for the still unresolved collision to emerge in all its difficulty. In the session of 26 December 1840, when the fourth article of the bill — that children under sixteen years of age cannot be employed on Sundays and on the holidays recognised by the law — came up for discussion, Herr Lüneau proposed the following wording: children under sixteen years of age can be employed only six days in the week.

§ 296 This wording was commanded by the principles of the July Revolution. What can holidays, recognised by the law, be after this revolution? Either they are recognised or no particular ones: i.e., in both cases: state law prescribes no holidays, subordinates all to the interest, and leaves it to private will to set holidays as it wishes, provided only that it does not come into collision with the interest of the state.

§ 297 "A day of rest is necessary," says the Journal des Débats of 27 December, "but may the law go so far as to determine it? Why choose Sunday and the holidays of the Catholic cult? Is it not better to leave the determination of the rest day to the freedom of each individual? All divergent cults are recognised in France — one hears: divergent, dissidens! — and enjoy the same freedom there: why, then, force the factory owner to close his workshop on Sunday, if his holiday is the Saturday?"

§ 298 According to the view of the Journal des Débats, Herr Lüneau's amendment was nevertheless rightly rejected: "for although all cults are equal before the law, although there is no longer a privileged religion, there is still always a religion of the majority, which must not be sacrificed. To expunge the celebration of Sunday from the law would mean to declare that there will no longer be any religion."

§ 299 Correct! There is no longer any religion when there is no longer a privileged religion. Take away the exclusive force from religion, and it no longer exists.

§ 300 Herr Martin du Nord, who is expressly praised by the Journal des Débats for his combating of Herr Lüneau's amendment, remarked that the article of the commission did not stand in contradiction with the Charter of 1830 and contained nothing contrary to the religious freedom of the citizens.

§ 301 But it remains that they are nevertheless forced to celebrate Sunday and the Christian holidays, which are religious days. They must conform to what the Christian religion, the religion of the majority of the French, the religion to which the French profess themselves almost with unanimity of votes, commands.

§ 302 The freedom granted to the Jews therefore limits itself to this, that they are not forced to violate their Sabbath law; if they wish, they can work on the Sabbath; but the Christian religious law, which the state expressly recognises as the norm of its laws, forces them to celebrate on other days besides their holidays. The law forces them to no active violation of their religious law, but places them, if they celebrate their Sabbath just as conscientiously as the Christians must celebrate their holidays, at a disadvantage in temporal interests compared to the Christians. The Christian religious law alone the state holds worthy of supporting with its laws; so that, as Herr Martin du Nord says, religion may not run into danger and those who daily wish to undermine the foundations of religion may not receive succour from the law, Sunday and the Christian holidays must be expressly mentioned in the law. In the interest of Christianity, on the other hand, it does not consider it worth the trouble to see to it that the adherents of another religion, e.g., the Jews, fulfil the duties commanded by their religious laws. It cares only for Christianity, not for other religions and their sanctification: naturally! one cannot serve two masters, says holy scripture, for one must love the one and hate the other. The Christian must be religious, so the state law wills it; the Jew may do as he pleases: as if, when Judaism is left to itself and in the enjoyment of this freedom no disadvantage for religion is to be feared, at least not feared by the state, Christianity could not be left free in the same way.

§ 303 Why, however, is Christianity privileged in that the state expressly protects it, and protects it to the end that, if the holidays commanded by it are not specially authorised by the law, the downfall of religion in general is to be feared? Why has Christianity alone the prerogative that a law which originally has only the purpose of preventing the physical exhaustion of children in the factories is brought into harmony with its ecclesiastical usages? Why does it stand at an advantage, why is it privileged against Judaism?

§ 304 Why does it stand at an advantage, why is it privileged against Judaism?

§ 305 Religious freedom therefore does not consist in all religions having equal rights; it does not consist in the equalisation of different religions, but in the monopolisation of one religion which is almost the only one and the one of all. The relatively "infinitely few" do not come into consideration, and the disadvantage into which they are placed, the oppression and injury they suffer, is none; the decree which annuls them for the state is no injustice, because they are so infinitely few. They do not suffer and have no cause to complain, because for the whole, or rather for the infinite majority of the favoured, the oppression they suffer is outweighed by the advantage of the majority.

§ 306 In the Christian state which confesses itself as such and designates the Christian religion as the state religion, it is a right which oppresses the Jews, even if only the right, therefore the injustice of monopoly. When, however, one religion as the religion of the mere majority impairs the other, pure force, the right of the greater mass, has taken the place of the semblance of right — or, in place of right, the simple fact that the Christian French are more numerous than the Jews and that these must therefore in cases of collision submit to those.

§ 307 Is that now the calm solution which, according to the exercises of the judicial will, life is accustomed to have in collisions? That would be a solution of the disputed question which suppresses the minority, whose rights are precisely at issue? That is called pouring balm into wounds when the minority is told that it has no cause to complain, since freedom from the outset belongs only to the overwhelming majority? That is rather called tearing open wounds and mocking the patient when he would complain of pain.

§ 308 The July Revolution was directed against privileges, therefore also against the state church. If, therefore, it says in the revised Charter that the Christian religion is the religion of the majority of the French, then with this proposition only a fact is expressed which cannot impair the adherents of another religion in their share of state rights.

§ 309 One did not dare, after the July Revolution, still to speak of a privileged religion.

§ 310 But one also did not have the courage to confess the freedom that was conquered in the revolution: since a freedom which one does not confess to oneself is none, one had in general not the courage to be free. One feared the state church; complete freedom seemed no less terrible: one therefore chose the apparently safe expedient of simply taking ad acta the fact that the majority of the French belong to a determinate religion.

§ 311 In ordinary life, freedom now indeed rules: the Jew, for example, who professes the religion of the minority, encounters no obstacles if he wishes to take part in the rights of all, since the majority as such and in its numerical relation has no particular rights. But he encounters only no obstacles; he is not expressly entitled by the law, but only tacitly, in that the mere expression "state church" is suppressed and the majority has the goodness to forget the preponderance which number gives it, or at least could give it.

§ 312 As soon, however, as the interests of the majority and the minority diverge — and it lies in the arbitrariness of the majority, and no law can forbid it, as soon as it wishes, to assert its particular interest and separate it from that of the minority — then the majority alone has right, and the minority must unconditionally submit to its will.

§ 313 If, therefore, life is free — the Jew, for example, counts as a free citizen — then the freedom rests only on an arbitrary and optional convenience of social practice, which, however, has in theory, in the law, in the category of the majority its unconquered enemy — an enemy which in every collision — and it can make a collision out of everything, bring about a collision at any moment — can prove its superiority.

§ 314 What, then, remains for the minority to do? If it is bold and conscious of a good right, it may not content itself with the lot which the superior power of the majority, which is not even expressly guaranteed by the law, assigns to it. If the law is opposed to it and it has advanced so far in culture that it in general wants no privileges even for itself, then it must move for the abolition of the law and combat the privileged majority, which wants to count only as privileged and by virtue of privilege. If, on the other hand, the enemy is not openly privileged in the law, but only in a secret way, then let it drive him from his hiding-place and move for the alteration of the law.

§ 315 If, however, it is not yet sure of itself, claims religious privilege for itself, and can only not bring it to dominion because it is a minority, then it will silently submit and console itself that it suffers only what it would have inflicted on others if it were in the majority.

§ 316 If, finally, it has neither the decisiveness to oppose every privilege nor the courage to admit that it still clings to a religious privilege, then the same half-heartedness which characterises the majority is also its essence; then it will observe the forms of cultivated society, bear with decency the injustice done to it, act as if nothing had happened, be careful not to trouble the majority with complaints or reproaches, and not to drive the matter so far that the collision really comes to speech. It will do everything, should it even have to deny itself to that end, to cover up the matter, in the hope and certainty that afterwards everything will go on again as half-heartedness and indecision brought it about, and guard as much as possible against coming to collisions.

§ 317 Herr Fould has played the latter role; he has, as the Journal des Débats praises in him, with decency and generosity rejected the opportunity which Herr Lüneau offered for a serious treatment of the question.

§ 318 "The Jews as the minority of the nation," he said, "do not wish to trouble the conscience of 33 million inhabitants of France. Sunday is a holiday of the majority: and for my co-religionists it must at least be a day of rest. They are content with the situation which has been granted to them. They ask for no more. It has been said,

§ 319 in relation to the religion of the majority of the French.

§ 320 The Journal des Débats reports on this outcome of the proceedings that Herr Fould had rejected "in the name of the Israelite religion" the succour which had been offered to it as superfluous and unnecessary; it should, however, also have reported whether Herr Fould had presented a credential which accredited him as authorised for so official a declaration; it should finally also have given its readers information on how it was possible for Herr Fould at all to come forward with a declaration whose meaning, if taken seriously, is no less than that the religion of his co-religionists no longer exists. Herr Fould, however, is not elected and sent to the Chamber of Deputies solely by Jews, not as a Jew, not as a representative of the Jews, not with the authority to represent and interpret the will and views of his co-religionists, but as a deputy of France. He therefore has not at all this one-sided right to declare that for the Jews in France the Sabbath no longer exists — it would, namely, no longer hold good if the commandment of complete rest were abolished and the day's rest limited to rest during a single hour — he therefore also has not the right to declare that Judaism in France has ceased to exist — just as, namely, Herr Martin du Nord saw in the proposal to omit the mention of Sunday in the law the motion for the declaration that Christianity had ceased to exist, with the same right (and this right is perfectly well-founded) the declaration that the Sabbath law no longer has any obligatoriness for the Jew would be the proclamation of the dissolution of Judaism. Herr Fould, however, had no right to this one-sided declaration; as a deputy of France he had only the duty to keep the general interest of the country in view, when a collision occurred, to present it clearly, if a party — and were it even the party of the overwhelming majority — wished to privilege a religion and subordinate the law to the privilege, to protest against it and to move for the abolition of the religious privilege, i.e., as he gave up Judaism in relation to the law, for the complete separation also of Christianity from the state law and for the declaration that Christianity no less than Judaism must be left as a mere private affair to the private judgment of each individual, with reservation of the inviolability of state interests.

§ 321 He could not, however, act thus, because he had no right, did not know himself to be in good right, namely could not think that for the Jews in France the Sabbath law in general no longer has any obligatoriness. Had he had the conviction that for his co-religionists this obligatoriness had ceased, he would have acted differently and would have put the most Christian Chamber to the deepest shame, by being able to demand from it for the sacrifice of the Jewish cult the just counter-sacrifice, and would certainly have demanded it.

§ 322 He acted, however, in the same spirit as the majority which rejected Herr Lüneau's amendment, as a representative of the juste-milieu. In the sense of this system he gave way and let himself and his co-religionists be sacrificed to a privilege: in the same sense the majority demanded and accepted the sacrifice.

§ 323 The juste-milieu is the reaction against the Christian state, against religious and ecclesiastical privilege, against the dominion of religion in general, but it does not yet set itself for freedom and against religious restriction; it remains on the half-way and cannot do otherwise; it is only enlightenment in religion, but not the freedom of religion and from privilege: the monopoly which it has overthrown it will therefore always restore, but in a rightless form, since it does not recognise the true, the exclusive character of religion.

§ 324 Life in the juste-milieu is free, for the law is overthrown and every citizen has equal rights; the law is unfree, it does not confess freedom, and the overwhelming majority, which is specifically different from the minority through its religious confession, stands opposed to this as a power.

§ 325 The juste-milieu is free in law, for the

§ 326 in relation to the religion of the majority of the French.

§ 327 In principle the juste-milieu does not admit the possibility of a collision between religious and civil and state interests: in practice it denies the collision because the minority is so infinitely small that every injustice done to it can hardly be called an injustice.

§ 328 The victims of the juste-milieu, who must suffer for the sake of the principle and in the consciousness of the principle which they themselves serve, hand each other the dagger with the words: non dolet, and console themselves with the thought that there is actually no collision at all, because they not only form the minority but also can give absolutely no occasion for a collision. In practice, however, and in ordinary life, they retain the principle which specifically distinguishes them from the majority and must always give occasion for collisions, since they just as little as the majority dare to bring to discussion the question whether that which separates them really has the right to separate them, whether it is at all justified in the face of the state law.

§ 329 In short, both sides have given up their privileges and yet prove in every incidental point where it should be shown that it has really happened that they have rather both retained them.

§ 330 Neither side dares seriously to attack the privilege of the other, because it fears danger for its own and would in fact have to give it up before it could attack that of the other side with success. The art of the juste-milieu therefore consists in letting things go as they will, in overlooking the contradiction of theory and ordinary life, when a collision occurs, in hypocritically covering it up and consoling oneself with the hope that a contentious case will not soon occur again — until the next day gives the lie to this art of life and a last day dawns which brings the true, sincere theory to dominion.

§ 331 The Christian state professes privilege in theory and remains consistent with itself in practice when it gives the Jews a privileged existence. The juste-milieu, on the other hand, is the described contradiction of freedom in theory, which disavows itself in practice, and of freedom in practice, which denies itself in theory, in the law. The collision of which the so-called Jewish question forms only one part has therefore also not yet been able to solve it.

§ 332 The faint-heartedness to which mankind has hitherto been educated, this faint-heartedness that man fears to make the confession to himself that he is man, that he is free and more than every and any privilege, the cowardice which seeks to hide from itself that the religion which one still professes and absolutely wants to profess has already received the death-blow through the manner in which it is professed, the insecurity which lies in the one-sided struggle against a determinate kind of oppression, while the universal unfreedom, the oppression which still weighs upon mankind in general, is not thought of, indeed this general nightmare is spared by those who combat only a determinate kind of oppression — this faint-heartedness and the cowardice of these illusions have brought it about that the Jewish question, as well as the general question of emancipation of our time, have hitherto not been able to receive their answer. In order to secure the correct answer, we shall dissolve the last illusions or put an end to the last possibility of all and every illusion.