CHAPTER XLII.

"Wenn es eine Stutenleiter von Leiden giebt, so hat Israel die hochste
Staffel erstiegen; wen die Dauer der Schmerzen und die Geduld, mit
welcher sie ertragen werden, adeln, so nehmen es die Juden mit den
Hochgeborenen aller Lander auf; wenn eine Literatur reich genannt
wird, die wenige klassische Trauerspiele besitzt, welcher Platz
gebuhrt dann einer Tragodie die anderthalb Jahrtausende wahrt,
gedichtet und dargestellt von den Helden selber?"--ZUNZ: _Die
Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters._


"If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all the
nations--if the duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are
borne ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land--if a
literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies,
what shall we say to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years,
in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes?"

Deronda had lately been reading that passage of Zunz, and it occurred to
him by way of contrast when he was going to the Cohens, who certainly bore
no obvious stamp of distinction in sorrow or in any other form of
aristocracy. Ezra Cohen was not clad in the sublime pathos of the martyr,
and his taste for money-getting seemed to be favored with that success
which has been the most exasperating difference in the greed of Jews
during all the ages of their dispersion. This Jeshurun of a pawnbroker was
not a symbol of the great Jewish tragedy; and yet was there not something
typical in the fact that a life like Mordecai's--a frail incorporation of
the national consciousness, breathing with difficult breath--was nested in
the self-gratulating ignorant prosperity of the Cohens?

Glistening was the gladness in their faces when Deronda reappeared among
them. Cohen himself took occasion to intimate that although the diamond
ring, let alone a little longer, would have bred more money, he did not
mind _that_--not a sixpence--when compared with the pleasure of the women
and children in seeing a young gentleman whose first visit had been so
agreeable that they had "done nothing but talk of it ever since." Young
Mrs. Cohen was very sorry that baby was asleep, and then very glad that
Adelaide was not yet gone to bed, entreating Deronda not to stay in the
shop, but to go forthwith into the parlor to see "mother and the
children." He willingly accepted the invitation, having provided himself
with portable presents; a set of paper figures for Adelaide, and an ivory
cup and ball for Jacob.

The grandmother had a pack of cards before her and was making "plates"
with the children. A plate had just been thrown down and kept itself
whole.

"Stop!" said Jacob, running to Deronda as he entered. "Don't tread on my
plate. Stop and see me throw it up again."

Deronda complied, exchanging a smile of understanding with the
grandmother, and the plate bore several tossings before it came to pieces;
then the visitor was allowed to come forward and seat himself. He observed
that the door from which Mordecai had issued on the former visit was now
closed, but he wished to show his interest in the Cohens before disclosing
a yet stronger interest in their singular inmate.

It was not until he had Adelaide on his knee, and was setting up the paper
figures in their dance on the table, while Jacob was already practicing
with the cup and ball, that Deronda said--

"Is Mordecai in just now?"

"Where is he, Addy?" said Cohen, who had seized an interval of business to
come and look on.

"In the workroom there," said his wife, nodding toward the closed door.

"The fact is, sir," said Cohen, "we don't know what's come to him this
last day or two. He's always what I may call a little touched, you know"--
here Cohen pointed to his own forehead--"not quite so rational in all
things, like you and me; but he's mostly wonderful regular and industrious
so far as a poor creature can be, and takes as much delight in the boy as
anybody could. But this last day or two he's been moving about like a
sleep-walker, or else sitting as still as a wax figure."

"It's the disease, poor dear creature," said the grandmother, tenderly. "I
doubt whether he can stand long against it."

"No; I think its only something he's got in his head." said Mrs. Cohen the
younger. "He's been turning over writing continually, and when I speak to
him it takes him ever so long to hear and answer."

"You may think us a little weak ourselves," said Cohen, apologetically.
But my wife and mother wouldn't part with him if he was a still worse
encumbrance. It isn't that we don't know the long and short of matters,
but it's our principle. There's fools do business at a loss and don't know
it. I'm not one of 'em."

"Oh, Mordecai carries a blessing inside him," said the grandmother.

"He's got something the matter inside him," said Jacob, coming up to
correct this erratum of his grandmother's. "He said he couldn't talk to
me, and he wouldn't have a bit o' bun."

"So far from wondering at your feeling for him," said Deronda, "I already
feel something of the same sort myself. I have lately talked to him at
Ram's book-shop--in fact, I promised to call for him here, that we might
go out together."

"That's it, then!" said Cohen, slapping his knee. "He's been expecting
you, and it's taken hold of him. I suppose he talks about his learning to
you. It's uncommonly kind of _you_, sir; for I don't suppose there's much
to be got out of it, else it wouldn't have left him where he is. But
there's the shop." Cohen hurried out, and Jacob, who had been listening
inconveniently near to Deronda's elbow, said to him with obliging
familiarity, "I'll call Mordecai for you, if you like."

"No, Jacob," said his mother; "open the door for the gentleman, and let
him go in himself Hush! don't make a noise."

Skillful Jacob seemed to enter into the play, and turned the handle of the
door as noiselessly as possible, while Deronda went behind him and stood
on the threshold. The small room was lit only by a dying fire and one
candle with a shade over it. On the board fixed under the window, various
objects of jewelry were scattered: some books were heaped in the corner
beyond them. Mordecai was seated on a high chair at the board with his
back to the door, his hands resting on each other and on the board, a
watch propped on a stand before him. He was in a state of expectation as
sickening as that of a prisoner listening for the delayed deliverance--
when he heard Deronda's voice saying, "I am come for you. Are you ready?"

Immediately he turned without speaking, seized his furred cap which lay
near, and moved to join Deronda. It was but a moment before they were both
in the sitting-room, and Jacob, noticing the change in his friend's air
and expression, seized him by the arm and said, "See my cup and ball!"
sending the ball up close to Mordecai's face, as something likely to cheer
a convalescent. It was a sign of the relieved tension in Mordecai's mind
that he could smile and say, "Fine, fine!"

"You have forgotten your greatcoat and comforter," said young Mrs. Cohen,
and he went back into the work-room and got them.

"He's come to life again, do you see?" said Cohen, who had re-entered--
speaking in an undertone. "I told you so: I'm mostly right." Then in his
usual voice, "Well, sir, we mustn't detain you now, I suppose; but I hope
this isn't the last time we shall see you."

"Shall you come again?" said Jacob, advancing. "See, I can catch the ball;
I'll bet I catch it without stopping, if you come again."

"He has clever hands," said Deronda, looking at the grandmother. "Which
side of the family does he get them from?"

But the grandmother only nodded towards her son, who said promptly, "My
side. My wife's family are not in that line. But bless your soul! ours is
a sort of cleverness as good as gutta percha; you can twist it which way
you like. There's nothing some old gentlemen won't do if you set 'em to
it." Here Cohen winked down at Jacob's back, but it was doubtful whether
this judicious allusiveness answered its purpose, for its subject gave a
nasal whinnying laugh and stamped about singing, "Old gentlemen, old
gentlemen," in chiming cadence.

Deronda thought, "I shall never know anything decisive about these people
until I ask Cohen pointblank whether he lost a sister named Mirah when she
was six years old." The decisive moment did not yet seem easy for him to
face. Still his first sense of repulsion at the commonness of these people
was beginning to be tempered with kindlier feeling. However unrefined
their airs and speech might be, he was forced to admit some moral
refinement in their treatment of the consumptive workman, whose mental
distinction impressed them chiefly as a harmless, silent raving.

"The Cohens seem to have an affection for you," said Deronda, as soon as
he and Mordecai were off the doorstep.

"And I for them," was the immediate answer. "They have the heart of the
Israelite within them, though they are as the horse and the mule, without
understanding beyond the narrow path they tread."

"I have caused you some uneasiness, I fear," said Deronda, "by my slowness
in fulfilling my promise. I wished to come yesterday, but I found it
impossible."

"Yes--yes, I trusted you. But it is true I have been uneasy, for the
spirit of my youth has been stirred within me, and this body is not strong
enough to bear the beating of its wings. I am as a man bound and
imprisoned through long years: behold him brought to speech of his fellow
and his limbs set free: he weeps, he totters, the joy within him threatens
to break and overthrow the tabernacle of flesh."

"You must not speak too much in this evening air," said Deronda, feeling
Mordecai's words of reliance like so many cords binding him painfully.
"Cover your mouth with the woolen scarf. We are going to the _Hand and
Banner_, I suppose, and shall be in private there?"

"No, that is my trouble that you did not come yesterday. For this is the
evening of the club I spoke of, and we might not have any minutes alone
until late, when all the rest are gone. Perhaps we had better seek another
place. But I am used to that only. In new places the outer world presses
on me and narrows the inward vision. And the people there are familiar
with my face."

"I don't mind the club if I am allowed to go in," said Deronda. "It is
enough that you like this place best. If we have not enough time I will
come again. What sort of club is it?"

"It is called 'The Philosophers.' They are few--like the cedars of
Lebanon--poor men given to thought. But none so poor as I am: and
sometimes visitors of higher worldly rank have been brought. We are
allowed to introduce a friend, who is interested in our topics. Each
orders beer or some other kind of drink, in payment for the room. Most of
them smoke. I have gone when I could, for there are other men of my race
who come, and sometimes I have broken silence. I have pleased myself with
a faint likeness between these poor philosophers and the Masters who
handed down the thought of our race--the great Transmitters, who labored
with their hands for scant bread, but preserved and enlarged for us the
heritage of memory, and saved the soul of Israel alive as a seed among the
tombs. The heart pleases itself with faint resemblances."

"I shall be very glad to go and sit among them, if that will suit you. It
is a sort of meeting I should like to join in," said Deronda, not without
relief in the prospect of an interval before he went through the strain of
his next private conversation with Mordecai.

In three minutes they had opened the glazed door with the red curtain, and
were in the little parlor, hardly much more than fifteen feet square,
where the gaslight shone through a slight haze of smoke on what to Deronda
was a new and striking scene. Half-a-dozen men of various ages, from
between twenty and thirty to fifty, all shabbily dressed, most of them
with clay pipes in their mouths, were listening with a look of
concentrated intelligence to a man in a pepper-and-salt dress, with blonde
hair, short nose, broad forehead and general breadth, who, holding his
pipe slightly uplifted in the left hand, and beating his knee with the
right, was just finishing a quotation from Shelley (the comparison of the
avalanche in his "Prometheus Unbound")

"As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round."

The entrance of the new-comers broke the fixity of attention, and called
for re-arrangement of seats in the too narrow semicircle round the fire-
place and the table holding the glasses, spare pipes and tobacco. This was
the soberest of clubs; but sobriety is no reason why smoking and "talking
something" should be less imperiously needed as a means of getting a
decent status in company and debate. Mordecai was received with welcoming
voices which had a slight cadence of compassion in them, but naturally all
glances passed immediately to his companion.

"I have brought a friend who is interested in our subjects," said
Mordecai. "He has traveled and studied much."

"Is the gentlemen anonymous? Is he a Great 'Unknown?'" said the broad-
chested quoter of Shelley, with a humorous air.

"My name is Daniel Deronda. I am unknown, but not in any sense great." The
smile breaking over the stranger's grave face as he said this was so
agreeable that there was a general indistinct murmur, equivalent to a
"Hear, hear," and the broad man said--

"You recommend the name, sir, and are welcome. Here, Mordecai, come to
this corner against me," he added, evidently wishing to give the coziest
place to the one who most needed it.

Deronda was well satisfied to get a seat on the opposite side, where his
general survey of the party easily included Mordecai, who remained an
eminently striking object in this group of sharply-characterized figures,
more than one of whom, even to Daniel's little exercised discrimination,
seemed probably of Jewish descent.

In fact pure English blood (if leech or lancet can furnish us with the
precise product) did not declare itself predominantly in the party at
present assembled. Miller, the broad man, an exceptional second-hand
bookseller who knew the insides of books, had at least grand-parents who
called themselves German, and possibly far-away ancestors who denied
themselves to be Jews; Buchan, the saddler, was Scotch; Pash, the
watchmaker, was a small, dark, vivacious, triple-baked Jew; Gideon, the
optical instrument maker, was a Jew of the red-haired, generous-featured
type easily passing for Englishmen of unusually cordial manners: and
Croop, the dark-eyed shoemaker, was probably more Celtic than he knew.
Only three would have been discernable everywhere as Englishman: the wood-
inlayer Goodwin, well-built, open-faced, pleasant-voiced; the florid
laboratory assistant Marrable's; and Lily, the pale, neat-faced copying-
clerk, whose light-brown hair was set up in a small parallelogram above
his well-filled forehead, and whose shirt, taken with an otherwise seedy
costume, had a freshness that might be called insular, and perhaps even
something narrower.

Certainly a company select of the select among poor men, being drawn
together by a taste not prevalent even among the privileged heirs of
learning and its institutions; and not likely to amuse any gentleman in
search of crime or low comedy as the ground of interest in people whose
weekly income is only divisible into shillings. Deronda, even if he had
not been more than usually inclined to gravity under the influence of what
was pending between him and Mordecai, would not have set himself to find
food for laughter in the various shades of departure from the tone of
polished society sure to be observable in the air and talk of these men
who had probably snatched knowledge as most of us snatch indulgences,
making the utmost of scant opportunity. He looked around him with the
quiet air of respect habitual to him among equals, ordered whisky and
water, and offered the contents of his cigar-case, which,
characteristically enough, he always carried and hardly ever used for his
own behoof, having reasons for not smoking himself, but liking to indulge
others. Perhaps it was his weakness to be afraid of seeming straight-
laced, and turning himself into a sort of diagram instead of a growth
which can exercise the guiding attraction of fellowship. That he made a
decidedly winning impression on the company was proved by their showing
themselves no less at ease than before, and desirous of quickly resuming
their interrupted talk.

"This is what I call one of our touch-and-go nights, sir," said Miller,
who was implicitly accepted as a sort of moderator--on addressing Deronda
by way of explanation, and nodding toward each person whose name he
mentioned. "Sometimes we stick pretty close to the point. But tonight our
friend Pash, there, brought up the law of progress; and we got on
statistics; then Lily, there, saying we knew well enough before counting
that in the same state of society the same sort of things would happen,
and it was no more wonder that quantities should remain the same, than
that qualities should remain the same, for in relation to society numbers
are qualities--the number of drunkards is a quality in society--the
numbers are an index to the qualities, and give us no instruction, only
setting us to consider the causes of difference between different social
states--Lily saying this, we went off on the causes of social change, and
when you came in I was going upon the power of ideas, which I hold to be
the main transforming cause."

"I don't hold with you there, Miller," said Goodwin, the inlayer, more
concerned to carry on the subject than to wait for a word from the new
guest. "For either you mean so many sorts of things by ideas that I get no
knowledge by what you say, any more than if you said light was a cause; or
else you mean a particular sort of ideas, and then I go against your
meaning as too narrow. For, look at it in one way, all actions men put a
bit of thought into are ideas--say, sowing seed, or making a canoe, or
baking clay; and such ideas as these work themselves into life and go on
growing with it, but they can't go apart from the material that set them
to work and makes a medium for them. It's the nature of wood and stone
yielding to the knife that raises the idea of shaping them, and with
plenty of wood and stone the shaping will go on. I look at it, that such
ideas as are mixed straight away with all the other elements of life are
powerful along with 'em. The slower the mixing, the less power they have.
And as to the causes of social change, I look at it in this way--ideas are
a sort of parliament, but there's a commonwealth outside and a good deal
of the commonwealth is working at change without knowing what the
parliament is doing."

"But if you take ready mixing as your test of power," said Pash, "some of
the least practical ideas beat everything. They spread without being
understood, and enter into the language without being thought of."

"They may act by changing the distribution of gases," said Marrables;
"instruments are getting so fine now, men may come to register the spread
of a theory by observed changes in the atmosphere and corresponding
changes in the nerves."

"Yes," said Pash, his dark face lighting up rather impishly, "there is the
idea of nationalities; I dare say the wild asses are snuffing it, and
getting more gregarious."

"You don't share that idea?" said Deronda, finding a piquant incongruity
between Pash's sarcasm and the strong stamp of race on his features.

"Say, rather, he does not share that spirit," said Mordecai, who had
turned a melancholy glance on Pash. "Unless nationality is a feeling, what
force can it have as an idea?"

"Granted, Mordecai," said Pash, quite good-humoredly. "And as the feeling
of nationality is dying, I take the idea to be no better than a ghost,
already walking to announce the death."

"A sentiment may seem to be dying and yet revive into strong life," said
Deronda. "Nations have revived. We may live to see a great outburst of
force in the Arabs, who are being inspired with a new zeal."

"Amen, amen," said Mordecai, looking at Deronda with a delight which was
the beginning of recovered energy: his attitude was more upright, his face
was less worn.

"That may hold with backward nations," said Pash, "but with us in Europe
the sentiment of nationality is destined to die out. It will last a little
longer in the quarters where oppression lasts, but nowhere else. The whole
current of progress is setting against it."

"Ay," said Buchan, in a rapid thin Scotch tone which was like the letting
in of a little cool air on the conversation, "ye've done well to bring us
round to the point. Ye're all agreed that societies change--not always and
everywhere--but on the whole and in the long run. Now, with all deference,
I would beg t' observe that we have got to examine the nature of changes
before we have a warrant to call them progress, which word is supposed to
include a bettering, though I apprehend it to be ill-chosen for that
purpose, since mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or a precipice.
And the questions I would put are three: Is all change in the direction of
progress? if not, how shall we discern which change is progress and which
not? and thirdly, how far and in what way can we act upon the course of
change so as to promote it where it is beneficial, and divert it where it
is injurious?"

But Buchan's attempt to impose his method on the talk was a failure. Lily
immediately said--

"Change and progress are merged in the idea of development. The laws of
development are being discovered, and changes taking place according to
them are necessarily progressive; that is to say, it we have any notion of
progress or improvement opposed to them, the notion is a mistake."

"I really can't see how you arrive at that sort of certitude about changes
by calling them development," said Deronda. "There will still remain the
degrees of inevitableness in relation to our own will and acts, and the
degrees of wisdom in hastening or retarding; there will still remain the
danger of mistaking a tendency which should be resisted for an inevitable
law that we must adjust ourselves to,--which seems to me as bad a
superstition or false god as any that has been set up without the
ceremonies of philosophising."

"That is a truth," said Mordecai. "Woe to the men who see no place for
resistance in this generation! I believe in a growth, a passage, and a new
unfolding of life whereof the seed is more perfect, more charged with the
elements that are pregnant with diviner form. The life of a people grows,
it is knit together and yet expanded, in joy and sorrow, in thought and
action; it absorbs the thought of other nations into its own forms, and
gives back the thought as new wealth to the world; it is a power and an
organ in the great body of the nations. But there may come a check, an
arrest; memories may be stifled, and love may be faint for the lack of
them; or memories may shrink into withered relics--the soul of a people,
whereby they know themselves to be one, may seem to be dying for want of
common action. But who shall say, 'The fountain of their life is dried up,
they shall forever cease to be a nation?' Who shall say it? Not he who
feels the life of his people stirring within his own. Shall he say, 'That
way events are wending, I will not resist?' His very soul is resistance,
and is as a seed of fire that may enkindle the souls of multitudes, and
make a new pathway for events."

"I don't deny patriotism," said Gideon, "but we all know you have a
particular meaning, Mordecai. You know Mordecai's way of thinking, I
suppose." Here Gideon had turned to Deronda, who sat next to him, but
without waiting for an answer he went on. "I'm a rational Jew myself. I
stand by my people as a sort of family relations, and I am for keeping up
our worship in a rational way. I don't approve of our people getting
baptised, because I don't believe in a Jew's conversion to the Gentile
part of Christianity. And now we have political equality, there's no
excuse for a pretense of that sort. But I am for getting rid of all of our
superstitions and exclusiveness. There's no reason now why we shouldn't
melt gradually into the populations we live among. That's the order of the
day in point of progress. I would as soon my children married Christians
as Jews. And I'm for the old maxim, 'A man's country is where he's well
off.'"

"That country's not so easy to find, Gideon," said the rapid Pash, with a
shrug and grimace. "You get ten shillings a-week more than I do, and have
only half the number of children. If somebody will introduce a brisk trade
in watches among the 'Jerusalem wares,' I'll go--eh, Mordecai, what do you
say?"

Deronda, all ear for these hints of Mordecai's opinion, was inwardly
wondering at his persistence in coming to this club. For an enthusiastic
spirit to meet continually the fixed indifference of men familiar with the
object of his enthusiasm is the acceptance of a slow martyrdom, beside
which the fate of a missionary tomahawked without any considerate
rejection of his doctrines seems hardly worthy of compassion. But Mordecai
gave no sign of shrinking: this was a moment of spiritual fullness, and he
cared more for the utterance of his faith than for its immediate
reception. With a fervor which had no temper in it, but seemed rather the
rush of feeling in the opportunity of speech, he answered Pash:--

'What I say is, let every man keep far away from the brotherhood and
inheritance he despises. Thousands on thousands of our race have mixed
with the Gentiles as Celt with Saxon, and they may inherit the blessing
that belongs to the Gentile. You cannot follow them. You are one of the
multitudes over this globe who must walk among the nations and be known as
Jews, and with words on their lips which mean, 'I wish I had not been born
a Jew, I disown any bond with the long travail of my race, I will outdo
the Gentile in mocking at our separateness,' they all the while feel
breathing on them the breath of contempt because they are Jews, and they
will breathe it back poisonously. Can a fresh-made garment of citizenship
weave itself straightway into the flesh and change the slow deposit of
eighteen centuries? What is the citizenship of him who walks among a
people he has no hardy kindred and fellowship with, and has lost the sense
of brotherhood with his own race? It is a charter of selfish ambition and
rivalry in low greed. He is an alien of spirit, whatever he may be in
form; he sucks the blood of mankind, he is not a man, sharing in no loves,
sharing in no subjection of the soul, he mocks it all. Is it not truth I
speak, Pash?"

"Not exactly, Mordecai," said Pash, "if you mean that I think the worse of
myself for being a Jew. What I thank our fathers for is that there are
fewer blockheads among us than among other races. But perhaps you are
right in thinking the Christians don't like me so well for it."

"Catholics and Protestants have not liked each other much better," said
the genial Gideon. "We must wait patiently for prejudices to die out. Many
of our people are on a footing with the best, and there's been a good
filtering of our blood into high families. I am for making our
expectations rational."

"And so am I!" said Mordecai, quickly, leaning forward with the eagerness
of one who pleads in some decisive crisis, his long, thin hands clasped
together on his lap. "I, too, claim to be a rational Jew. But what is it
to be rational--what is it to feel the light of the divine reason growing
stronger within and without? It is to see more and more of the hidden
bonds that bind and consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea,
consecrate it with kinship: the past becomes my parent and the future
stretches toward me the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to
drain away the sap of special kindred that makes the families of men rich
in interchanged wealth, and various as the forests are various with the
glory of the cedar and the palm? When it is rational to say, 'I know not
my father or my mother, let my children be aliens to me, that no prayer of
mine may touch them,' then it will be rational for the Jew to say, 'I will
seek to know no difference between me and the Gentile, I will not cherish
the prophetic consciousness of our nationality--let the Hebrew cease to
be, and let all his memorials be antiquarian trifles, dead as the wall-
paintings of a conjectured race. Yet let his child learn by rote the
speech of the Greek, where he abjures his fellow-citizens by the bravery
of those who fought foremost at Marathon--let him learn to say that was
noble in the Greek, that is the spirit of an immortal nation! But the Jew
has no memories that bind him to action; let him laugh that his nation is
degraded from a nation; let him hold the monuments of his law which
carried within its frame the breath of social justice, of charity, and of
household sanctities--let him hold the energy of the prophets, the patient
care of the Masters, the fortitude of martyred generations, as mere stuff
for a professorship. The business of the Jew in all things is to be even
as the rich Gentile."

Mordecai threw himself back in his chair, and there was a moment's
silence. Not one member of the club shared his point of view or his
emotion; but his whole personality and speech had on them the effect of a
dramatic representation which had some pathos in it, though no practical
consequences; and usually he was at once indulged and contradicted.
Deronda's mind went back upon what must have been the tragic pressure of
outward conditions hindering this man, whose force he felt to be telling
on himself, from making any world for his thought in the minds of others--
like a poet among people of a strange speech, who may have a poetry of
their own, but have no ear for his cadence, no answering thrill to his
discovery of the latent virtues in his mother tongue.

The cool Buchan was the first to speak, and hint the loss of time. "I
submit," said he, "that ye're traveling away from the questions I put
concerning progress."

"Say they're levanting, Buchan," said Miller, who liked his joke, and
would not have objected to be called Voltairian. "Never mind. Let us have
a Jewish night; we've not had one for a long while. Let us take the
discussion on Jewish ground. I suppose we've no prejudice here; we're all
philosophers; and we like our friends Mordecai, Pash, and Gideon, as well
as if they were no more kin to Abraham than the rest of us. We're all
related through Adam, until further showing to the contrary, and if you
look into history we've all got some discreditable forefathers. So I mean
no offence when I say I don't think any great things of the part the
Jewish people have played in the world. What then? I think they were
iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose we don't want any men
to be maltreated, white, black, brown, or yellow--I know I've just given
my half-crown to the contrary. And that reminds me, I've a curious old
German book--I can't read it myself, but a friend of mine was reading out
of it to me the other day--about the prejudicies against the Jews, and the
stories used to be told against 'em, and what do you think one was? Why,
that they're punished with a bad odor in their bodies; and _that_, says
the author, date 1715 (I've just been pricing and marking the book this
very morning)--that is true, for the ancients spoke of it. But then, he
says, the other things are fables, such as that the odor goes away all at
once when they're baptized, and that every one of the ten tribes, mind
you, all the ten being concerned in the crucifixion, has got a particular
punishment over and above the smell:--Asher, I remember, has the right arm
a handbreadth shorter than the left, and Naphthali has pig's ears and a
smell of live pork. What do you think of that? There's been a good deal of
fun made of rabbinical fables, but in point of fables my opinion is, that
all over the world it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. However,
as I said before, I hold with the philosophers of the last century that
the Jews have played no great part as a people, though Pash will have it
they're clever enough to beat all the rest of the world. But if so, I ask,
why haven't they done it?"

"For the same reason that the cleverest men in the country don't get
themselves or their ideas into Parliament," said the ready Pash; "because
the blockheads are too many for 'em."

"That is a vain question," said Mordecai, "whether our people would beat
the rest of the world. Each nation has its own work, and is a member of
the world, enriched by the work of each. But it is true, as Jehuda-ha-Levi
first said, that Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the
core of affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and
the reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life
into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weak
and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us."

"They're not behind any nation in arrogance," said Lily; "and if they have
got in the rear, it has not been because they were over-modest."

"Oh, every nation brags in its turn," said Miller.

"Yes," said Pash, "and some of them in the Hebrew text."

"Well, whatever the Jews contributed at one time, they are a stand-still
people," said Lily. "They are the type of obstinate adherence to the
superannuated. They may show good abilities when they take up liberal
ideas, but as a race they have no development in them."

"That is false!" said Mordecai, leaning forward again with his former
eagerness. "Let their history be known and examined; let the seed be
sifted, let its beginning be traced to the weed of the wilderness--the
more glorious will be the energy that transformed it. Where else is there
a nation of whom it may be as truly said that their religion and law and
moral life mingled as the stream of blood in the heart and made one
growth--where else a people who kept and enlarged their spiritual store at
the very time when they are hated with a hatred as fierce as the forest
fires that chase the wild beast from his covert? There is a fable of the
Roman, that swimming to save his life he held the roll of his writings
between his teeth and saved them from the waters. But how much more than
that is true of our race? They struggled to keep their place among the
nations like heroes--yea, when the hand was hacked off, they clung with
their teeth; but when the plow and the harrow had passed over the last
visible signs of their national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their
land was stifled with the blood of the sowers and planters, they said,
'The spirit is alive, let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because
movable--so that it may be carried from generation to generation, and our
sons unborn may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope
built on an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it,
though often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying
wounded amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unknown dog, the
Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of them
to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he diffused it;
his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines of Greece and
carrying their products to the world. The native spirit of our tradition
was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed and draw out the
compressed virtues of law and prophecy; and while the Gentile, who had
said, 'What is yours is ours, and no longer yours,' was reading the letter
of our law as a dark inscription, or was turning its parchments into shoe-
soles for an army rabid with lust and cruelty, our Masters were still
enlarging and illuminating with fresh-fed interpretation. But the
dispersion was wide, the yoke of oppression was a spiked torture as well
as a load; the exile was forced afar among brutish people, where the
consciousness of his race was no clearer to him than the light of the sun
to our fathers in the Roman persecution, who had their hiding-place in a
cave, and knew not that it was day save by the dimmer burning of their
candles. What wonder that multitudes of our people are ignorant, narrow,
superstitious? What wonder?"

Here Mordecai, whose seat was next the fireplace, rose and leaned his arm
on the little shelf; his excitement had risen, though his voice, which had
begun with unusual strength, was getting hoarser.

"What wonder? The night is unto them, that they have no vision; in their
darkness they are unable to divine; the sun is gone down over the
prophets, and the day is dark above them; their observances are as
nameless relics. But which among the chief of the Gentile nations has not
an ignorant multitude? They scorn our people's ignorant observance; but
the most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance--sunk to the
cunning greed of the fox, to which all law is no more than a trap or the
cry of the worrying hound. There is a degradation deep down below the
memory that has withered into superstition. In the multitudes of the
ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession
of the divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic
centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its
religion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a polity, our
dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a
national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the
West--which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be,
as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to
pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel,
and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but
in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all
knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories."

Mordecai's voice had sunk, but with the hectic brilliancy of his gaze it
was not the less impressive. His extraordinary excitement was certainly
due to Deronda's presence: it was to Deronda that he was speaking, and the
moment had a testamentary solemnity for him which rallied all his powers.
Yet the presence of those other familiar men promoted expression, for they
embodied the indifference which gave a resistant energy to his speech. Not
that he looked at Deronda: he seemed to see nothing immediately around
him, and if any one had grasped him he would probably not have known it.
Again the former words came back to Deronda's mind,--"You must hope my
hopes--see the vision I point to--behold a glory where I behold it." They
came now with gathered pathos. Before him stood, as a living, suffering
reality, what hitherto he had only seen as an effort of imagination,
which, in its comparative faintness, yet carried a suspicion, of being
exaggerated: a man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease,
consciously within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense
life in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, except
for its possible making some obstruction to a conceived good which he
would never share except as a brief inward vision--a day afar off, whose
sun would never warm him, but into which he threw his soul's desire, with
a passion often wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth. It was
something more than a grandiose transfiguration of the parental love that
toils, renounces, endures, resists the suicidal promptings of despair--all
because of the little ones, whose future becomes present to the yearning
gaze of anxiety.

All eyes were fixed on Mordecai as he sat down again, and none with
unkindness; but it happened that the one who felt the most kindly was the
most prompted to speak in opposition. This was the genial and rational
Gideon, who also was not without a sense that he was addressing the guest
of the evening. He said--

"You have your own way of looking at things, Mordecai, and as you say,
your own way seems to you rational. I know you don't hold with the
restoration of Judea by miracle, and so on; but you are as well aware as I
am that the subject has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by Jews
and Christians. And as to the connection of our race with Palestine, it
has been perverted by superstition till it's as demoralizing as the old
poor-law. The raff and scum go there to be maintained like able-bodied
paupers, and to be taken special care of by the angel Gabriel when they
die. It's no use fighting against facts. We must look where they point;
that's what I call rationality. The most learned and liberal men among us
who are attached to our religion are for clearing our liturgy of all such
notions as a literal fulfillment of the prophecies about restoration, and
so on. Prune it of a few useless rites and literal interpretations of that
sort, and our religion is the simplest of all religions, and makes no
barrier, but a union, between us and the rest of the world."

"As plain as a pike-staff," said Pash, with an ironical laugh. "You pluck
it up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark, shave off the knots,
and smooth it at top and bottom; put it where you will, it will do no
harm, it will never sprout. You may make a handle of it, or you may throw
it on the bonfire of scoured rubbish. I don't see why our rubbish is to be
held sacred any more than the rubbish of Brahmanism or Buddhism."

"No," said Mordecai, "no, Pash, because you have lost the heart of the
Jew. Community was felt before it was called good. I praise no
superstition, I praise the living fountains of enlarging belief. What is
growth, completion, development? You began with that question, I apply it
to the history of our people. I say that the effect of our separateness
will not be completed and have its highest transformation unless our race
takes on again the character of a nationality. That is the fulfillment of
the religious trust that moulded them into a people, whose life has made
half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me that the ten tribes
are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the children of Judah have
mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as a river with rivers?
Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; they are torn and
soiled and trodden on; but there is a jeweled breastplate. Let the wealthy
men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skilful
in all arts, the speakers, the political counselors, who carry in their
veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, and
the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device--
let them say, 'we will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard
but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy
fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their
separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood." They have wealth enough to
redeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the
skill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade.
And is there no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian
Europe tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which
the Turk gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an
arena? There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity,
grand, simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality of
protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our
ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western freedom
amid the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an organic
centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jew
shall have a defense in the court of nations, as the outraged Englishman
of America. And the world will gain as Israel gains. For there will be a
community in the van of the East which carries the culture and the
sympathies of every great nation in its bosom: there will be a land set
for a halting-place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium
is for the West. Difficulties? I know there are difficulties. But let the
spirit of sublime achievement move in the great among our people, and the
work will begin."

"Ay, we may safely admit that, Mordecai," said Pash. "When there are great
men on 'Change, and high-flying professors converted to your doctrine,
difficulties will vanish like smoke."

Deronda, inclined by nature to take the side of those on whom the arrows
of scorn were falling, could not help replying to Pash's outfling, and
said--

"If we look back to the history of efforts which have made great changes,
it is astonishing how many of them seemed hopeless to those who looked on
in the beginning.

"Take what we have all heard and seen something of--the effort after the
unity of Italy, which we are sure soon to see accomplished to the very
last boundary. Look into Mazzini's account of his first yearning, when he
was a boy, after a restored greatness and a new freedom to Italy, and of
his first efforts as a young man to rouse the same feelings in other young
men, and get them to work toward a united nationality. Almost everything
seemed against him; his countrymen were ignorant or indifferent,
governments hostile, Europe incredulous. Of course the scorners often
seemed wise. Yet you see the prophecy lay with him. As long as there is a
remnant of national consciousness, I suppose nobody will deny that there
may be a new stirring of memories and hopes which may inspire arduous
action."

"Amen," said Mordecai, to whom Deronda's words were a cordial. "What is
needed is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The heritage of
Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in their veins as a
power without understanding, like the morning exultation of herds; it is
the inborn half of memory, moving as in a dream among writings on the
walls, which it sees dimly but cannot divide into speech. Let the torch of
visible community be lit! Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in a
great outward deed, and let there be another great migration, another
choosing of Israel to be a nationality whose members may still stretch to
the ends of the earth, even as the sons of England and Germany, whom
enterprise carries afar, but who still have a national hearth and a
tribunal of national opinion. Will any say 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinoza
had not a faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his
intellect at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's
nakedness and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' Yet
Baruch Spinoza confessed, he saw not why Israel should not again be a
chosen nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are
dead? Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and
Rome, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe,
and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dug
from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver in
millions of human frames."

Mordecai had stretched his arms upward, and his long thin hands quivered
in the air for a moment after he had ceased to speak. Gideon was certainly
a little moved, for though there was no long pause before he made a remark
in objection, his tone was more mild and deprecatory than before; Pash,
meanwhile, pressing his lips together, rubbing his black head with both
his hands and wrinkling his brow horizontally, with the expression of one
who differs from every speaker, but does not think it worth while to say
so. There is a sort of human paste that when it comes near the fire of
enthusiasm is only baked into harder shape.

"It may seem well enough on one side to make so much of our memories and
inheritance as you do, Mordecai," said Gideon; "but there's another side.
It isn't all gratitude and harmless glory. Our people have inherited a
good deal of hatred. There's a pretty lot of curses still flying about,
and stiff settled rancor inherited from the times of persecution. How will
you justify keeping one sort of memory and throwing away the other? There
are ugly debts standing on both sides."

"I justify the choice as all other choice is justified," said Mordecai. "I
cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but the
good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our religious
life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of aught but
wrong. The Master has said, an offence against man is worse than an
offence against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the breasts of
Jews, who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what wonder, since
there is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Our national life was a
growing light. Let the central fire be kindled again, and the light will
reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our race will learn to think of
their sacred land, not as a place for saintly beggary to await death in
loathsome idleness, but as a republic where the Jewish spirit manifests
itself in a new order founded on the old, purified and enriched by the
experience our greatest sons have gathered from the life of the ages. How
long is it?--only two centuries since a vessel carried over the ocean the
beginning of the great North American nation. The people grew like meeting
waters--they were various in habit and sect--there came a time, a century
ago, when they needed a polity, and there were heroes of peace among them.
What had they to form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected by
the vision of a better? Let our wise and wealthy show themselves heroes.
They have the memories of the East and West, and they have the full vision
of a better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art
and wisdom. So will a new Judaea, poised between East and West--a covenant
of reconciliation. Will any say, the prophetic vision of your race has
been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry: the angel of progress has no
message for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the paid workers to lay
open--the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken field? I say that the
strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. The sons of Judah have
to choose that God may again choose them. The Messianic time is the time
when Israel shall will the planting of the national ensign. The Nile
overflowed and rushed onward: the Egyptian could not choose the overflow,
but he chose to work and make channels for the fructifying waters, and
Egypt became the land of corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty
of discernment and resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask
no choice or purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine
principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us
contradict the blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the
better future of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us
be as if we were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage,
claim the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood
with the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there; it will be
fulfilled."

With the last sentence, which was no more than a loud whisper, Mordecai
let his chin sink on his breast and his eyelids fall. No one spoke. It was
not the first time that he had insisted on the same ideas, but he was seen
to-night in a new phase. The quiet tenacity of his ordinary self differed
as much from his present exaltation of mood as a man in private talk,
giving reasons for a revolution of which no sign is discernable, differs
from one who feels himself an agent in a revolution begun. The dawn of
fulfillment brought to his hope by Deronda's presence had wrought
Mordecai's conception into a state of impassioned conviction, and he had
found strength in his excitement to pour forth the unlocked floods of
emotive argument, with a sense of haste as at a crisis which must be
seized. But now there had come with the quiescence of fatigue a sort of
thankful wonder that he had spoken--a contemplation of his life as a
journey which had come at last to this bourne. After a great excitement,
the ebbing strength of impulse is apt to leave us in this aloofness from
our active self. And in the moments after Mordecai had sunk his head, his
mind was wandering along the paths of his youth, and all the hopes which
had ended in bringing him hither.

Every one felt that the talk was ended, and the tone of phlegmatic
discussion made unseasonable by Mordecai's high-pitched solemnity. It was
as if they had come together to hear the blowing of the _shophar_, and had
nothing to do now but to disperse. The movement was unusually general, and
in less than ten minutes the room was empty of all except Mordecai and
Deronda. "Good-nights" had been given to Mordecai, but it was evident he
had not heard them, for he remained rapt and motionless. Deronda would not
disturb this needful rest, but waited for a spontaneous movement.