§ 16
Where the advocates usually end — namely, that they seek to move the judges and the public, were it only by showing how their clients have been driven by necessity somewhat beyond the straight line — with that the defenders of the Jews usually begin. Either they complain of the oppression under which the Jews have lived in the Christian world, or, if they partly admit some of the reproaches which refer to the disposition, temperament and condition of the Jews, they make that oppression only the more odious by asserting that it alone is to blame for that temperament and for the degraded condition of Judaism.
The Innocence of the Jews
§ 17
Whoever seeks to defend the Jews in this way and thinks to save them does them, on the contrary, the greatest dishonour and gives up their cause as lost.
§ 18
Of martyrs one usually says they were innocently killed — there is no greater insult one could offer them. Had they then done nothing for which they suffered? Was what they did not opposed to the conceptions of life of their opponents? The greater and more significant they are as martyrs, the greater must have been what they did, what violated the existing order, i.e., the greater was their guilt towards the existing order.
§ 19
Of the Jews one will at least say that they suffered for their law, for their way of life and for their nationality, or were martyrs? Well, then they are also guilty of the oppression they suffered, they called it forth through their attachment to their law, to their nationality, to their whole essence. A nothing cannot be oppressed; what is oppressed must have caused the oppression through its whole being and manner thereof.
§ 20
Nothing in history stands outside the law of causality; the Jews could least of all stand outside it, since through the tenacity with which they have clung to their nationality — and which their defenders themselves praise and admire in them — they reacted against the movements and changes of history. History wants development, new formations, progress and transformations; the Jews wanted always to remain the same, they therefore strove against the first law of history — did they then not, after they had first pressed against the most powerful mainspring that exists, call forth the counter-pressure?
§ 21
The Jews have been oppressed because they first oppressed and braced themselves against the wheel of history.
§ 22
If the Jews stood outside this play of the law of causality, if they had been purely passive, if they had not also, for their part, been in tension against the Christian world, then every bond that linked them with history would also be lacking, and they could never enter into and intervene in the newer development of history. Their cause would be simply lost.
§ 23
Give the Jews, therefore, the honour that they incurred the oppression they suffered through their essence, that they therefore also themselves caused the hardening of their essence which was brought about by the oppression, and you make them, if still a subordinate member of a two-thousand-year history, yet a member of it, which is capable and finally has the obligation to develop further with it.
§ 24
The defenders of Judaism themselves sometimes forget that they ascribe to it the purely passive role of the sufferer, and at once praise in it a most beneficial influence on the prosperity of states.
§ 25
An example!
Spain
§ 26
See! they cry, what has become of Spain after the most Catholic Majesties condemned the industrious, active and enlightened Jewish population to exile!
§ 27
Spain, however, did not sink because it lacked a Jewish population, but because intolerance, freedom and persecution-mania were the principle of its government. It sank through its own fault and had to sink under the pressure of those principles, even if the entire Jewish population had remained in the realm. Did the condition of France, then, become a desperate one because the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove hosts of Huguenots into banishment? No! the arbitrariness of the government, the consolidation of class privileges, the tutelage of the people, the exemptions which the nobility and clergy enjoyed — that and that alone brought France to the point where it could help itself only through the Revolution. Who knows whether the stiff-necked Huguenots would have contributed particularly much to the liberation of the fatherland: enough, France managed even without them.
§ 28
Spain also freed itself from the yoke of the most Catholic government without the Jews, and it is very much a question whether the Jews, had they remained in Spain, would have contributed significantly to the liberation.
§ 29
If the Christian states have their fall and the decline of their power to thank only themselves, and even when the Jews come into play, the manner in which this happens is prescribed by the principle of the Christian state, then we can also, on the other side, clear them of the reproach that they brought about the ruin of a state.
Poland
§ 30
The constitution which left that enormous gap between the ruling aristocracy and the mass of serfs and made it possible for the Jews to insinuate themselves in such great numbers as nowhere else — a constitution, therefore, which had left empty the place that in western Europe the third estate knew how to acquire for itself, and which, to fill it, required a foreign element — this constitution led Poland to its downfall.
§ 31
Poland itself is to blame for its misfortune, and it is also to blame that a foreign population nested in it, which only contributed to making the wound of the people's life still more dangerous and deadly.
§ 32
If Poland is thus itself to blame for its fate, it nevertheless, on the other hand, does not speak in favour of the Jews that they have known how to secure for themselves a position only in the most imperfect state system of Europe, in a number approximately equal to the total number of the other European Jews — a position which one could almost call necessary for this state system and an essential complement of it; that they could establish themselves only in a state which is as little as possible a state, speaks against their capacity to make themselves into members of a real state; still more it speaks against them that they used the imperfection of the Polish constitution only for their private advantage, thus only widened and consolidated the gap in the Polish people's life, instead of forming the material which would fill it in an organic or rather political manner.
§ 33
An opponent of Jewish emancipation remarks and complains "that all the distilleries of Galicia are concentrated in the sole possession of the Jew, and with this the moral power of the inhabitants is given into his hand." As if the Jews were to blame that the moral power of a people is contained in the brandy in the glass or can be lost in this glass! The opponent of the Jews must himself admit that the Polish people seeks in brandy "its only solace for all the hardships of its life and for every oppression by its landlord." Well, then it is the pressure of the constitution which directs the peasant to the Jew, then it is the spiritlessness of the general life which has brought it about that the peasant seeks his spirit in the brandy glass and the spiritual power of the people is located in the hand of the Jew, if he possesses all the distilleries.
§ 34
The constitution has given the Jew his great significance and placed him in possession of the people's spirit — is it a glory of the Jew that he has given himself a position within such a constitution, that he gives the peasant the spirit which the constitution has left him? Is it his glory that he squeezes out and distils the last spiritual consequence of the constitution? Does it speak for him that he lends himself to this and even sees his sole business in it, to oppress the victims of the constitution yet again? The constitution is guilty when it delivers the flayed peasant to the Jew, but it is his guilt that he lends himself to drawing the worst consequences of the constitution.
§ 35
In general, this relation repeats itself in civil society as a whole.
Civil Society
§ 36
Need is the powerful mainspring which sets civil society in motion. Each uses the other to procure satisfaction for his need, and is in turn used by the other for the same purpose. The tailor uses my need to nourish himself and his family; I use him to satisfy my need.
§ 37
The egoistic activity of civil society was restricted by the Christian state through forms which removed its ugliness and finally linked it with the general interest. The particular ways of satisfying need are united in estates, and that estate to which the need of the moment must give the greatest power, and therefore also must most vividly sustain selfishness — the industrial estate — had even in the Christian state articulated itself in the form of corporations. The member of an estate as such has the obligation to pursue not only his personal interest but at the same time the general interest of his estate; the estate-interest sets a necessary limit to his egoism, and he knows himself honoured, as a member of an estate, to care no longer only for himself, the individual, whom it provides with sustenance, but for the need of civil society in general.
§ 38
Where, however, need rules with its accidental prices and whims, and, in addition, need itself is again dependent on accidental natural events for its satisfaction, there the individual cannot prevent his honour from being exposed to a sudden, unforeseen price beyond his calculation. Precisely its foundation, the need which secures civil society its existence, guarantees its necessity, exposes its existence to constant dangers, maintains in it an uncertain element and that mixture of poverty, wealth, distress and prosperity, in constant flux — in short, change.
§ 39
This uncertain element the Jews have not
§ 40
it belongs to civil society — they are innocent of its existence. But another question is whether it is to be credited to them as a merit that they have exploited it by means of usury and made it exclusively, namely without working in the other circles of civil society, their domain.
§ 41
As the gods of Epicurus dwell in the interstices of the world, where they are exempt from definite labour, so the Jews have fixed themselves outside the definite interests of estates and corporations, have nested in the cracks and crevices of civil society and appropriated the victims which the uncertain element of civil society demands.
§ 42
But they were denied access to the estates and corporations, the defenders of emancipation reply to us. The question, however, is whether it was possible for them, since they regard themselves as a people, to take a real and sincere position in those circles, whether they have not therefore excluded themselves and, since as a people they stand outside the interests of peoples in general, had to take their position also outside the interests of estates and corporations.
§ 43
What? one further objects, the industry of the Jews, their frugality, the diligence with which they pursue their gain, their inventiveness when it is a matter of seeking out new sources of acquisition — this indefatigable perseverance — will you not acknowledge these as virtues?
The Industriousness of the Jews
§ 44
Who has worked for eighteen hundred years on the formation of Europe? Who has fought the battles through which a hierarchy that wanted to maintain its dominion beyond its time was brought to defeat? Who has created Christian and modern art and filled the cities of Europe with eternal monuments? Who has developed the sciences? Who has pondered the theory of state constitutions?
§ 45
Not a single Jew is to be named. Spinoza was no longer one when he created his system, and Moses Mendelssohn died of grief when he heard that Lessing, his deceased friend, had been a Spinozist.
§ 46
Now the second question! Good! The European peoples have excluded the Jews from their general affairs. But was it possible for them to do so if the Jews did not exclude themselves? Can the Jew as a Jew, without ceasing to be a Jew, work for the further development of art and science, fight for freedom against the hierarchy, really interest himself in the state and reflect on its general laws? — On the other hand: are art and science things which can be made inaccessible by an arbitrary prohibition or by the accidental situation into which someone finds himself forced by his birth? Are they not universal goods which cannot be forbidden? How many who have significantly intervened in art and science have emerged from the lowest estates of society and had to overcome extraordinary obstacles in order to gain access to the realm of art and science? Why have the Jews not worked their way up? It will surely lie in the fact that their particular national spirit contradicts the general interests of art and science.
§ 47
The industry of the Jews is of a kind that has nothing to do with the interests of history.
§ 48
It is similar with the tenacity which one is accustomed to praise in the Jewish national spirit.
§ 49
The tenacity of the Jewish national spirit.
The Tenacity of the Jewish National Spirit
§ 50
It would not be cruel, but only right and fair, if we were to name to our opponents the peoples who have likewise maintained themselves despite all the storms of history, and indeed also in dispersion, among the civilised peoples. We shall, however, be able to bring the matter into its correct position even without that.
§ 51
Does it bring shame upon the peoples from whose fusion the French people has arisen that they gave up and lost their independence? Certainly not! Surrender and dissolution in the whole proves only historical capacity for development, just as their capacity to contribute to the formation of the determinate historical national spirit
§ 52
Have the peoples from whose confluence the population of the great modern republic in North America has formed retained their earlier particular peculiarity? No! Even now, for example, the German influxes take on in a short time the character which distinguishes the whole, and this truly does them no dishonour; it proves only their capacity to find their way into the general direction of the people's life there and to live themselves into it.
§ 53
Do the European peoples in general maintain themselves in the tenacity which one praises in the Jews? On the contrary, they change their character, and history wills these changes.
§ 54
Instead of praising the tenacity of the Jewish national spirit and regarding it as an advantage, one should rather ask what it is fundamentally and whence it comes.
§ 55
It is the lack of historical capacity for development, it grounds the completely unhistorical character of this people, and it is in turn grounded in its Oriental essence. In the Orient this stationary national being is at home, because the freedom of man, and therefore also the possibility of development, is still limited there. In the Orient, in India, we still find Parsees who honour the sacred fire of Ormuzd, living in dispersion.
§ 56
The individual, and likewise the people, which in its thinking and acting follows universal laws, will also develop historically, for universal laws have their ground in reason and freedom, develop with the advances of reason, and these advances are all the more certain to be expected and easier to carry out, since reason in its laws has to do with its own products and, when it wishes to change them, does not first need to ask a foreign, superterrestrial power for permission.
§ 57
In the Orient, however, man has not yet known that he is free and rational, and therefore has not yet known freedom and reason as his essence, but has set his essential and highest task in the performance of senseless and groundless ceremonies. The Oriental therefore also has no history yet, if only that deserves to be called history which is a development of universal human freedom. To sit under the fig tree and the vine is for the Oriental the highest that is allotted to man, and he performs his religious ceremonies again and again, their unchanged performance he regards as his highest duty and contents himself with the fact that they are just so and so, must be so and so, because he knows no other ground for all this than that it is once so and, according to a higher, inscrutable will, is to be so.
§ 58
Such a character, such a law must indeed give one a particular tenacity, but at the same time rob one of the possibility of historical development.
§ 59
Rightly do the Jews speak of the fence of the law: the law has fenced them off against the influences of history, and all the more so since their law itself from the outset commanded separation from the peoples.
§ 60
They have preserved themselves: but the question is whether their content is of so profound a nature that they are to be praised for having preserved themselves unchanged with it.
§ 61
Are the mountains therefore something greater and more worthy of recognition and admiration than the Greek people, because they still stand unchanged today, while the Greeks of Homer, Sophocles, Pericles and Aristotle no longer live?
§ 62
Moses Mendelssohn placed the advantage of the Jewish religion in the fact that it does not teach universal truths, but only prescribes positive laws of which no universal ground can be given. He therefore declared with right — for what goes beyond my horizon and can give me no account, over that I have no power — that the law retains its obligatoriness for the Jew until Jehovah abolishes it as definitely and expressly as he revealed it on Sinai.
§ 63
Is this tenacity a glory? Does it make the people whose existence it preserves into a historical people? It only maintains it against history.
Life Under Oppression
§ 64
If a people does not advance with history, does not let itself be inflamed by the enthusiasm necessary for the struggle for historical ideas, does not let itself be seized by historical passions, then one of the most significant means for the elevation of morality is lost to it. It finally concerns itself not at all with general human interests; care for private advantage becomes its sole affair, and the feeling for true honour is lost.
§ 65
Under the oppression under which the Jews lived, one replies, it was also not otherwise possible than that nobler feelings were suppressed in them. Can one reproach them with lack of morality, if one has excluded them from the affairs and interests which give ever new impetus to the spirit of the European peoples?
§ 66
Against this it has already been remarked that oppression otherwise tends rather to improve men and sharpens their feeling for honour and morality. The oppression under which the Christians lived during the first three centuries of their era drove them only the more to develop the virtues with whose help they overthrew the Roman world empire. The Jews, however, during the oppression under which they have hitherto lived, have found and set up no moral principle which could give a new form to the world or, first of all, to themselves.
§ 67
Well, if oppression has not improved the Jews, lift it, give them full, unrestricted freedom and see whether they do not become better without oppression!
§ 68
Yet another reason would have to impel us to this step and experiment. It is not true that oppression truly improves and opens the way to real morality. It only makes rigid, isolates man, rather cuts him off from the way to true morality by making participation in the public affairs of state life impossible, and gives private virtues either a harsh character or transforms them into egoistic concern for private affairs which take place only between the four walls of one's own house. That cannot be called truly moral when the first Christians, unconcerned about the general affairs of the Roman empire, or rather listening for every breath of air to see whether it might not be the herald of a storm that would put an end to it, were occupied only with themselves and cared only for their souls — were it even for the salvation of them.
§ 69
All the more urgent, therefore, is the necessity that the oppression under which the Jews have hitherto lived be lifted!
§ 70
Halt! Let us first ask whether the Jews as Jews must not separate themselves from the peoples, whether they do not therefore themselves want it so that the chariot of history passes over them.
§ 71
When they were still independent as a people, did they breathe more freely then, was their breast so broad that they were capable of general human feelings, did they feel less oppressed?
§ 72
No! Even then they considered themselves the people which is pre-eminently the oppressed one, and they were it in fact, because their pretension, which constituted their true essence, had always to remain unsatisfied. They wanted and had to be, according to their fundamental view, the people pure and simple, the only people, i.e., the people beside which the other peoples had no right to be a people. Every other people was in comparison with them not really a people; they, as the chosen people, were the only true people, the people which was to be everything and to take possession of the world.
§ 73
Thus, by the mere fact that peoples existed at all, they were oppressed; the existence, prosperity, fortune and advancement of other peoples was their suffering, i.e., their existence was exclusive, therefore always a suffering one, since the existence of other peoples excluded, negated and mocked the essence of their existence — exclusiveness — itself.
§ 74
Give them, therefore, full independence, and they will themselves again and again abolish it, so long as they remain Jews and regard themselves as the chosen, the only entitled people. Their legal idea of themselves is not only threatened but completely refuted by reality and actual history; they are therefore necessarily oppressed, and their suffering is incurable.
§ 75
After what has been said, we shall also be able correctly to appreciate the often-repeated remark that among the Jews there are proportionally fewer crimes than among the Christians in whose midst they live.
The Number of Criminals
§ 76
It is not the number but the kind of crimes that matters, not the legal assessment of them, which expresses itself in the degree of punishment, but their moral judgment, which takes into account the connection of the crime with social conditions.
§ 77
A crime may be legally assessed as very slight and yet bear witness to a very deep decay of the inner moral constitution; upon another the judge may set a very high penalty, while it is recognised by him who at the same time looks to the ground as the violent resolution of a deep moral struggle of which the lesser criminal was not capable.
§ 78
It further depends on the sphere of legal and moral interests in which the crimes are committed.
§ 79
There, where the most manifold interests, e.g., of the different estates, intersect, where outmoded laws still struggle with new claims, more crimes may be committed than in a region where not such significant interests rub against each other, and therefore less opportunity for collisions is given, and yet the proportional majority of crimes committed there will not overthrow the proposition that in the midst of the bustle of these crimes a new, higher moral order is forming. On the other hand, it may be that where fewer and lesser crimes are committed, not only the opportunity and strength for greater ones, but also the strength which is capable of creating new social conditions, is lacking.
§ 80
We shall now give the question, so far as Christianity and the Christian state come into play, its correct position.
§ 81
The hostility of the Christian world towards the Jews has been called simply inexplicable. Judaism, after all, the mother of Christianity, the Mosaic religion the preparation for the Christian; whence then the Christian hatred of the Jews, this bottomless ingratitude of the consequence towards its ground, of the daughter towards her mother?
The Conduct of Consequence Toward Its Presupposition
§ 82
Why does the blossom burst the enclosure of the bud? Why does the fruit cast off the petals? Why does the ripe seed burst the fruit capsule? Because the following cannot be if the preceding remains, because it would never come to appearance if it depended on the preceding.
§ 83
In spiritual, historical relations the presupposition still really exists and insists on existing, despite the fact that its consequence is present. It therefore denies to its consequence precisely its significance, that it is the consequence which has correctly interpreted, developed and completed its essence; it disputes the right of its consequence to exist. It is not the daughter who is ungrateful towards her mother, but the mother who will not recognise her daughter. The daughter has fundamentally the higher right, because she is the true essence of the earlier, and the earlier, when its consequence has appeared, has lost its true essence. If one wishes to call both sides egoistic, then the later is egoistic because it wills itself and development, the earlier because it wills itself but not development.
§ 84
The earlier has the germ of development, but in the struggle with its consequence it will not admit development for others and itself does not enter into development. It "has the key of knowledge, but it enters not in, and hinders those who would enter in."
§ 85
The hostility of the Christian world towards Judaism is therefore perfectly explicable and grounded in their mutual essential relation. Neither can let the other exist and recognise it; if the one exists, the other does not exist; each believes itself to be the absolute truth; if, therefore, it recognises the other and denies itself, it denies that it is the truth.
§ 86
But does not this exclusiveness of Christianity contradict the love which it designates as its principle? We shall see.
The Zeal and Exclusiveness of Christian Love
§ 87
The zeal and exclusiveness of Christian love.
§ 88
The zeal and exclusiveness of Christian love.
§ 89
When it is written that God as the God of love regards not the person, that rather in every nation he who fears him and does right is acceptable to him, this means only that God makes no distinction among the peoples, but receives all into his kingdom who will accept the true faith.