Against the Current Part 15

This is the way he put the case, speaking to his world-wide audience.

"We have honestly tried, everywhere, to lose ourselves in the people among whom we lived, and have asked only that we might retain the faith of our Fathers. That, however, is not permitted.

"In vain are we loyal, and in many cases, overenthusiastic patriots; in vain do we bring the same sacrifices which our fellow citizens offer; in vain do we endeavour to increase the fame of our Fatherland in art, science, trade and commerce. In every country where we have lived through many centuries, we are regarded as strangers, often even by those whose forefathers were not yet in the land when ours had long agonized and toiled for it.

"Only the majority can decide who in a country are the strangers, and it is a question decided by force. I yield none of our rights when I say that in the present condition of this world, might goes before right. In vain, therefore, are we brave patriots, even like the Huguenots who were forced to emigrate. If our enemies would only leave us alone; but they will not.

"We have proved that we cannot be annihilated by oppression and persecution. Those means have won only our weaker brethren--the strong returned bravely to their people."

This last phrase left its barb in my conscience and I struggle with it still. Is there a way which leads from the large human consciousness back to the narrow confines of race or tribe? Can I wipe out of my experience changes which seem to have affected the very cells and nerves out of which my body is fashioned?

In a new way I have asked the Nicodemus question--"Can a man enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?"

"The strong returned bravely to their people." Yes, I am one with the Jew. My heart leaps to him when he is down--hated, ridiculed, or forced to begin again the age-long march which has no ending--but it shrinks from him when he is up, and the other man, whoever he be, is held down by cunning, strength, or whatever the weapon may be.

I am not afraid to share his ignominy. I am not running away from all those subtle cruelties practiced by society against him--for where the Jew is not welcome I do not care to go. And yet I cannot give up this liberating sense of kinship with all the human--not only with the ruling race or type but with all humanity.

Those who know anything about me know that I have not only preached this doctrine of the brotherhood of man dogmatically but that I have practiced it, and have suffered the consequences.

I cannot give up the name "Christian," I cannot return to Judaism, although it betray weakness or even cowardice.

I feel myself born again, and I cannot undo so vital an experience unless I am overwhelmed by some great moral catastrophe.

Christianity is to me the real internationalism in which all the races and nations are one or are growing into oneness. In it the individual casts off that which is specific to his race, he becomes one with all men, and therefore one with the divine in them.

In this experience he rids himself of those great sins, prejudice and pride of race, and receives the blessing in store for those who believe and practice the teachings of the "_Son of Man._"

It is difficult of course to say what would have been my view-point had I met Theodore Herzl twenty or more years ago. I might have returned bravely "to my people." But when one meets Jesus of Nazareth there is no way back; there are new marching orders, and they call "Forward."

Theodore Herzl returned to _his people_ because the _other people_ did not want him.

I cannot return, whether the _other people_ reciprocate my feeling for them or not.

Into my sphere of relationship no rebuff nor insult can enter; because I ask nothing for myself; while for the other man, whether he be Jew or Gentile, I ask only that he shall have the opportunity to earn the respect of his fellow men, regardless of the faults of his race.

XXVIII

CONCLUSION

What has my own race bequeathed to me? What do I owe to Slav, Magyar, German and Anglo-Saxon? What has the synagogue done for me, what the church with the cross, or the church with the weather-vane?

From somewhere I have a pa.s.sion for the human. Shall I say this is Jewish?

I saw that pa.s.sion demonstrated in my Jewish teacher, whose grave is level with the ground in the old G.o.d's Acre; I believe that the Slavic candy-maker--the by-product of whose trade and the remnants of whose library I purchased--possessed it. I believe it shone out of the face of the _Pany's_ sister, who kissed my blackened cheeks and put russet apples into my trousers' pockets; the Lutheran pastor preached and lived it in his narrow environment. I have faith to believe that the Jesuit fathers and German savants had it, hidden behind pious phrases or bold rationalistic utterances.

Perhaps my race bequeathed this love of humanity to the rest of the human race; even then it proves that for which I am contending: That all a race or family can leave to its progeny which is worth inheriting, is not in the cell or nerve or blood, but is what is cast upon the waters of life, of which "whosoever will may come and drink freely."

The sons of the prophets develop into the sons of Belial, and a poor, ignorant villager's child ministers in the true spirit before Jehovah's altar.

"Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father!"

cries the indignant John. "For I say unto you that G.o.d is able out of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." This is the great tragedy of races, nations and families; yet it is the great comfort of the outcast, the oppressed, the burdened and the heavy laden.

What else have I that is specifically Jewish? What shines from my eyes or manifests itself in gait and gesture, I do not know. Many of my characteristics, no doubt, are betrayed in these pages which are a frank revelation of my younger self.

I have no pa.s.sion for barter or money; I am invariably worsted in a bargain and always accept unquestioningly the wage offered me. But even were I a Shylock, a veritable Shakespearean Jew, and worse, if that is possible, I could point to men of other races not unlike him.

I know very intimately men and women of many races who profess the Christian faith, yet love barter more than prayer and mammon more than G.o.d; who preach or teach or write, "for revenue only," and never for the glory of G.o.d; and who tenaciously hold to the letter of their contract, even to the cutting out of the very heart of their unfortunate victims.

Perhaps one of my Jewish traits is that I cannot hide my faults. What few virtues I may possess, I trust I do not flaunt in the market-places.

I have tried to be humble in this New World environment, so garish and loud; which trumpets from the housetop the things that have been "spoken in the closet"; which "makes broad its phylacteries" and writes all about their length and breadth and cost in the society columns of our daily press.

The Christian virtue of humility is hard to practice in a land controlled by the publicist; a land in which the advertising value of a thing is regarded more highly than the thing itself.

If there are shreds of good in me, it is because by the grace of G.o.d (using that old phrase without cant) I have always met good people among the different races with whom my lot has been cast. I do not recall a single man, even those I have met in jails, penitentiaries, dives and gambling h.e.l.ls, who has r.e.t.a.r.ded any progress towards the good that I cared to make. I could fill twice the number of pages I have written, recording the names and deeds of those who have inspired me to lead the better life.

Nor have I ever met a woman (and I have met women close to the bottomless pit) who ever used the art of her s.e.x in an effort to drag me down; but I know very many women whose whole being radiates purity and in whose presence one cannot help being a man. I have never met a woman before whom I could not lift my hat in deference; and this feeling of reverence for womanhood I owe in large degree to my mother and my wife.

Within me are all possibilities of good and evil, and everything that lies between; yet these same tendencies I have found in other men of other races. Never all the good nor all the evil in any one man or any one race.

Every individual I know is an intricate and unfinished piece of curiously constructed mechanism in body and spirit; linked to the past, yet free to the shaping forces of each fleeting moment; never completed, never perfected, never, I hope, so totally ruined but that love can redeem it, and "set it again upon a rock and establish its going."

I am a debtor to all the races that in varying degrees influenced my life during its most impressionable period.

From the Slav, I have a love for physical labour and a sense of its dignity.

The Magyar has given me a feeling for "the mere pleasure of living"; although I have never quite been able to abandon myself to it.

In the sphere of my intellect, I am Germanic. My mother tongue is German, as are my pa.s.sion for intellectual freedom and my impatience with its restraint; while the inward look, which so easily leads to despair, bears the German stamp.

I came to America early enough in life to catch the pa.s.sion for liberty and the love of democracy; but too late to be anything but an impractical idealist to whom "life is more than meat," and human history more than a succession of economic facts.

I have not written an autobiography, or desired to write one; that would have been presumptuous; nor have I written a bit of purposeless fiction with which to burden the book-market; that folly I would not commit. I have honestly recorded certain influences which shaped the life of a child until youth, and I leave all deductions to my patient readers. Yet I should like to point out in which direction the most valuable lessons of my experience lie. I believe they are:

First, that racial characteristics are largely determined by environment.

Second, that race prejudice is an artificial product of the mind, induced by various influences.

Third, that in the highest and lowest spheres of thought and activity, all races are alike.

Fourth, that every human being, no matter what his colour, race, faith or cla.s.s, has a right to earn the respect of his neighbour and his community, by virtue of _what he himself is_.

Fifth, that the brotherhood of man will become an established fact as soon as each man determines to live like a brother in his relation to his fellows.

Sixth, that Christianity has in its _spirit_ the solution of cla.s.s and race problems; but that in its _practice_ it is lamentably far from solving them.