History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)

Some of his brilliant qualities shone out from Mendelssohn's eyes and features, and won him more hearts than if he had striven to gain them. Curiosity about "this Jew" began to be aroused even at the court of Frederick the Great. He was considered the embodiment of wisdom. The dauntless Lessing infused such courage into him, that he ventured to criticise in a periodical the poetical works of the Prussian sovereign, and gently hint at their faults (1760). Frederick the Great, who regarded verse-making as poetry, and dogmatism as philosophy, worshiped the Muse in the court language of the day, thoroughly despised the German tongue, at this time pregnant with real poetry, and mocked at intellectual treasures sacred to solid thinkers. Mendelssohn, the Jew, felt hurt at the king's hatred of German, as well as by his superficial judgments. However, as one dare not tell the truth to monarchs, he cleverly, through the trumpet of praise, emitted a soft note of blame, clear enough to the acute reader.

Skillfully as Mendelssohn had concealed his censure of the king, yet a malicious courtier, the preacher Justi, discovered it, and also the name of the fault-finder, and denounced him, "a Jew, who had thrown aside all reverence for the most sacred person of His Majesty in insolent criticism of his poetry." Suddenly, Mendelssohn received a harsh command to appear on a Saturday at Sans-Souci; an act in accordance with the coarseness of the age. Full of dread, Mendelssohn made his way to Potsdam to the royal castle, was examined, and asked whether he was the author of the disrespectful criticism. He admitted his offense, and excused himself with the observation, that "he who makes verses, plays at nine-pins, and he who plays at nine-pins, be he monarch or peasant, must be satisfied with the judgment of the boy who has charge of the bowls as to the merit of his playing." Frederick was no doubt ashamed to punish the Jewish reviewer for his subtle criticism in the presence of the French cynics of his court, and thus Mendelssohn escaped untouched.

Fortune was extraordinarily favorable to this man, unwittingly the chief herald of the future. It gave him warm friends, who found true delight in exalting him, though a Jew, in public opinion. It secured for him a not brilliant, yet fairly independent situation as book-keeper in the house where he had hitherto held the toilsome position of resident tutor. It bestowed on him a trusty, tender, and simple life companion, who surrounded him with tokens of devoted love. Fortune soon procured a great triumph for him. The Berlin Academy had offered a prize for an essay upon the subject, "Are philosophical (metaphysical) truths susceptible of mathematical demonstration?" Modestly Mendelssohn set to work to solve this problem. He did not belong to the guild of the learned, had not learnt his alphabet until grown up, at an age when conventionally educated youths have their heads crammed with Latin. When he became aware that his friend, the young, highly-promising scholar Thomas Abt, was also a competitor, he almost lost courage, and desired to withdraw. Still his work gained the prize (June, 1763), not alone over Abt, but even over Kant, whose essay received only honorable mention. Mendelssohn obtained the prize of fifty ducats and the medal. The Jew, the tradesman, had defeated his rivals of the learned guild. Kant's disquisition went deeper into the question, but that of Mendelssohn had the advantage of clearness and comprehensibility. "He had torn the thorns from the roses of philosophy." Compelled to acquire each item of his knowledge by great labor, and having only with difficulty become conversant with the barbarous dialect of the schools, he did not content himself with dry formulæ, but exerted himself to render intelligible, both for himself and others, metaphysical conceptions and truths. This circumstance gained him the victory over his much profounder opponent. His essay, which together with that of Kant was translated into French and Latin at the expense of the Academy, earned for him assured renown in the learned world, which was enhanced by the fact that the prize-winner was a Jew.

In the same year (October, 1763), he received a distinction from King Frederick, characteristic of the low condition of the Jews in Prussia. This honor was the privilege of being a protected Jew (Schutz-Jude), i. e., the assurance that he would not some fine day be expelled from Berlin. Hitherto, he had been tolerated in Berlin only as a retainer of his employer. The philosophical King Frederick sympathized with the antipathy of his illustrious enemy Maria Theresa to the Jews, and issued anti-Jewish laws worthy of the Middle Ages rather than of the eighteenth century, so boastful of its humanity. He wished to see the Jews of his dominions diminished in number, rather than increased. Frederick's "general privilege" for the Jews was an insult to the age. Marquis d'Argent, one of Frederick's French courtiers, who in his naïveté could not conceive that a wise and learned man like Mendelssohn might any day become liable to be driven out of Berlin by the brutal police, urged Mendelssohn to sue for the privilege of protection, and the king to grant it. However, a long time elapsed before the dry official document granting it reached him. At last Mendelssohn became a Prussian "Schutz-Jude."

The philosophical "Schutz-Jude" of Berlin now won great success with a work, which met with almost rapturous admiration from his contemporaries in all classes of society. Two decades later this production was already obsolete, and at the present day has only literary value. Nevertheless, when it appeared, it justly attained great importance. Mendelssohn had hit upon the exact moment to bring it forward, and he became one of the celebrities of the eighteenth century. For almost sixteen centuries Christianity had educated the nations of Europe, governed them, and almost surfeited them with belief in the supernatural. It had employed all available means to effect its ends, and finally, when the thinkers awakened from their slumber induced by its lullabies, to inquire into the certainty secured by this announcement of salvation which promised so much, serious people said with regret – whilst sceptics chuckled with brutal delight – that it offered delusive fancies in the place of truth.

In serious compositions, or in satires, the French thinkers of the eighteenth century – the whole body of Materialists – had revealed the hollowness of the doctrine, in which the so-called civilized peoples had found comfort and tranquillity for many centuries. The world was deprived of a God, the heavens were enshrouded in mist; all that had hitherto seemed firm and incapable of being displaced was turned topsy-turvy. The doctrine of Jesus had lost its power of attraction, and become degraded in the eyes of the earnest and thoughtful to the level of childish fables. Infidelity had become a fashion. With the undeifying of Jesus appeared to go hand-in-hand the dethronement of God, and doubt of the important dogma of the immortality of the soul, which Christian theology had borrowed from Greek philosophy and, as always, adorning itself with strange feathers, had claimed as its original creation. Thereupon depended not merely the confidence of mankind in a future existence, but also the practical morals of the present. If the soul is mortal and transient, they thought in the eighteenth century, then the acts of man are of no consequence! Whether he be good or evil, virtuous or criminal, on the other side of the grave there was no retribution. Thus, after the long dream of many centuries, the civilized portion of mankind again fell into the despondency prevalent in the Roman society of the empire; they were without God, without support, without moral freedom, without stimulus to a virtuous life. Man had been degraded to a complicated machine.

Mendelssohn was also biased by the prejudice that the dignity of man stands and falls with the question of the immortality of the soul. He therefore undertook to restore this belief to the cultured world, to discover again the lost truth, to establish it so firmly and ward off materialistic attacks upon it so decisively, that the dying man should calmly look forward to a blissful future and to felicity in the after-life. He composed a dialogue called "Phædon, or the Immortality of the Soul." It was to be a popular book, a new doctrine of salvation for the unbelieving or sceptical world. Therefore he gave to his dialogue an easily comprehensible, attractive style, after the pattern of Plato's dialogue of the same name, from which he copied also the external form. But Plato supplied him with the mere form. Mendelssohn caused his Socrates to give utterance to the philosophy of the eighteenth century through the mouth of his pupil, Phædon.

His starting-point, in proving the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, is the fact of the existence of God, of which he has the highest possible certainty. The soul is the work of God, just as the body is; the body does not actually perish after dissolution, but is transformed into other elements; much less, then, can the soul, a simple essence, be decomposed, and perish. Further, God has acquainted the soul with the idea of immortality, has implanted it in the soul. Can He, the Benevolent and True One, practice deception?

"If our soul were mortal, then reason would be a dream, which Jupiter has sent us that we may forget our misery; and we would be created like the beasts, only to seek food and die."

Every thought inborn in man must for that reason be true and real.

In demonstrating the doctrine of immortality, Mendelssohn had another noble purpose in view. He thought to counteract the malady of talented youths of the day, the Jerusalem-Werthers, who, without a goal for their endeavors, excluded from political and elevating public activity, lost in whimsical sentimentality and self-created pain, sank to thoughts of suicide, which they carried out, unless courage, too, was sicklied over. Mendelssohn, therefore, in his "Phædon" sought to inculcate the conviction, that man, with his immortal soul, is a possession of God, and has no manner of right to decide arbitrarily about himself and his life, or about the separation of his soul from his body – feeble argumentation, but sufficient for that weakly, effeminate generation.

With his "Phædon," Mendelssohn attained more than he had intended and expected, viz., "conviction of the heart, warmth of feeling," in favor of the doctrine of immortality. "Phædon" was the most popular book of its time, and was perused with heart and soul. In two years it ran through three editions, and was immediately translated into all the European languages, also into Hebrew. Theologians, philosophers, artists, poets, such as Herder, Gleim, and Goethe, then but a youth, statesmen, and princes – men and women – were edified by it, reanimated their depressed religious courage, and, with an enthusiasm which would to-day appear absurd, thanked the Jewish sage who had restored to them that comfort which Christianity no longer afforded. The deliverance by Mendelssohn, the Jew, was as joyfully welcomed by the world grown pagan, as in an earlier epoch that effected by the Jews, Jesus and Paul of Tarsus, was welcomed by the heathens. His contemporaries were delighted both with the contents and the form, with the glowing, fresh, vigorous style, a happy, artistic imitation of Plato's dialogues. From all sides letters of congratulation poured in upon the modest author. Everyone of the literary guild who passed through Berlin eagerly sought out the Jewish Plato, as one of the greatest celebrities of the Prussian capital, to have a word with him. The Duke of Brunswick seriously thought of securing the services of Mendelssohn for his state. The Prince of Lippe-Schaumburg treated him as a bosom friend. The Berlin Academy of Sciences proposed him as a member. But King Frederick struck the name of Mendelssohn off the list, because, as it was said, he desired at the same time to have the Empress Catherine admitted into the learned body, and she would be insulted in having a Jew as a companion. Two Benedictine friars – one from the convent of Peter, near Erfurt, the other from the convent of La Trappe – addressed Mendelssohn, the Jew, as the adviser of their conscience, for instruction in moral and philosophical conduct. The book "Phædon," out of date in twenty years, as remarked above, raised its author to the height of fame. He was fortunate, because he introduced it to the world exactly at the right moment.

An incident vexatious in itself served to exalt Mendelssohn to an extraordinary degree in the eyes of his contemporaries, and to invest him with the halo of martyrdom. John Caspar Lavater, an evangelical minister of Zürich, an enthusiast who afterwards joined the Jesuits, thought that he had found in Mendelssohn's intellectual countenance a confirmation of his deceptive art, the reading of the character and talents of a man from his features. Lavater asserted that in every line of Mendelssohn's face the unprejudiced could at once recognize the soul of Socrates. He was completely enchanted with Mendelssohn's head, raved about it, desiring to possess a well-executed model, in order to bring honor upon his art. Mendelssohn having caused his Phædon to speak in so Greek a fashion that no one could have recognized the author as a Jew, Lavater arrived at the fantastic conclusion that Mendelssohn had become entirely estranged from his religion. Lavater had learned that certain Berlin Jews were indifferent to Judaism, and forthwith reckoned Mendelssohn amongst their number. There was the additional fact that, in a conversation reluctantly entered upon with Lavater, Mendelssohn had pronounced calm, sober judgment upon Christianity, and had spoken with a certain respect of Jesus, though with the reservation, "if Jesus of Nazareth had desired to be considered only a virtuous man." This expression appeared to Lavater the dawning of grace and belief. What if this great man, this incarnation of wisdom, who had become indifferent towards Judaism, could be won over to Christianity! This was the train of thought which arose in Lavater's mind after reading "Phædon." Ingenuous or cunning, he spread his net for Mendelssohn, and thus showed how ignorant he was of his true character. About this time, a Geneva professor, Caspar Bonnet, had written in French a weak apology, entitled "Investigation into the Evidences of Christianity against Unbelievers." This work Lavater translated into German, and sent to Mendelssohn, with an awkward dedication, which looked like a snare (September 4, 1769). Lavater solemnly adjured him to refute publicly Bonnet's proofs of Christianity, or, if he found them correct, to do "what sagacity, love of truth, and honesty would naturally dictate, what a Socrates would have done, if he had read this treatise, and found it unanswerable." If Lavater had been really acquainted with the secrets of the heart, as he prided himself, he would have understood that, even if Mendelssohn had severed all connection with Judaism, Christianity was still more repugnant to him, and that sagacity, that is to say, regard to profit and the advantages of a pleasant existence, was altogether lacking in his character. Lavater did not desire to expose him before the public, but he wished to create a sensation, without thinking what pain he was causing the shy scholar of Berlin.

Mendelssohn later had reason to thank Lavater for having through thoughtlessness or pious cunning drawn him out of his diffidence and seclusion. Mendelssohn had indeed expressed his relations to Judaism and his co-religionists so vaguely that onlookers might have been misled. In public life he was a philosopher and an elegant writer, who represented the principles of humanity and good taste, and apparently did not trouble about his race. In the darkness of the Ghetto he was a strictly orthodox Jew, who, apparently unconcerned about the laws of beauty, joined in the observance of every pious custom. Self-contained and steadfast though he was in reality, he seemed to be a twofold personality, revealing the one or the other as he was in Christian or in Jewish society. He could not stand up in defense of Judaism without, on the one hand, affronting Christianity by his philosophical convictions, and, on the other, showing, if ever so lightly, his dissatisfaction with the chaotic traditions of the synagogue, and so offending the sensibility of his co-religionists and quarreling with them. Neither of these courses, owing to his peace-loving character, entered his mind. He would have been able to pass his life in an attitude of silence, if Lavater's rude importunity had not dragged him out of this false position, altogether unworthy of a man with a mission. Painful as it was to reveal his innermost thoughts upon Judaism and Christianity, he could not hold his peace at this challenge, without being considered a coward even by his friends. These reflections weighed heavily upon him, and caused him to take up the glove.

He skillfully carried on the contest thus forced upon him, and was ultimately victorious. At the end of 1769, in a public letter addressed to Christendom and Lavater, its representative, Mendelssohn in the mildest form wrote most cutting truths, whose utterance in former times would inevitably have led to bloodshed or the stake. Mendelssohn had examined his religion since the days of his youth, and found it true. Philosophy and belles-lettres had with him never been an end, but the means to prepare him for testing Judaism. He could not possibly expect advantage from adherence to it; and as for pleasure —

"O my worthy friend, the position assigned to my co-religionists in civil life is so far removed from all free exercise of spiritual powers, that one's satisfaction is not increased by learning the true rights of man. He who knows the state in which we now are, and has a humane heart, will understand more than I can express."

If the examination of Judaism had not produced results favorable to it, what would have chained him to a religion so intensely and universally despised, what could have prevented him from leaving it? Fear of his co-religionists, forsooth? Their secular power was too insignificant to do any harm.

"I do not deny that I have noticed in my religion certain human additions and abuses, such as every religion accepts in course of time, which unfortunately dim its splendor. But of the essentials of my faith I am so firmly and indisputably assured, that I call God to witness that I will adhere to my fundamental creed as long as my soul does not assume another nature."

He was as opposed to Christianity as ever, for the reason which he had communicated to Lavater verbally, and which the latter should not have concealed, namely, that its founder had declared himself to be God.

"Yet, for my part, Judaism might have been utterly crushed in every polemical text-book, and triumphantly arraigned in every school composition, without my ever entering into a controversy about it. Without the slightest contradiction from me, any scholar or any sciolist in subjects Rabbinic might have constructed for himself and his readers the most ridiculous view of Judaism out of worthless books which no rational Jew reads, or knows of. The contemptible opinion held of Jews I would desire to shame by virtue, not by controversy. My religion, my philosophy, and my status in civil life are the weightiest arguments for avoiding all religious discussion, and for treating in public writings of truths equally important to all religions."

Judaism was binding only upon the congregation of Jacob. It desired proselytes so little, that the rabbis had ordained that any person who offered to unite himself to this religion was to be dissuaded from his design.

"The religion of my fathers does not care to be spread abroad; we are not to send missions to the two Indies or to Greenland, to preach our belief to remote nations. I have the good fortune to possess as friends many excellent men not of my creed. We love each other dearly, and never have I said in my heart, 'What a pity for that beautiful soul!' It is possible for me to recognize national prejudices and erroneous religious opinions among my fellow-citizens, and nevertheless feel constrained to remain silent, if these errors do not directly affect natural religion or natural law (morality), but are only accidentally connected with the advancement of good. It is true that the morality of our actions does not deserve the name, if based upon error… But as long as truth is not recognized, as long as it does not become national, so as to work as powerful an effect upon the great mass of the people as ingrained prejudice, the latter must be almost sacred to every friend of virtue. These are the reasons that religion and philosophy give me to shun religious disputes."

Besides, being a Jew, he had to be content with toleration, because in other countries even this was denied his race. "Is it not forbidden, according to the laws of your native city," he ask Lavater, "for your circumcised friend even to visit you in Zürich?" The French work of Bonnet he did not find so convincing, he said, as to cause his convictions to waver; he had read better defenses of Christianity written by Englishmen and Germans; also it was not original, but borrowed from German writings. The arguments were so feeble and so little tending to prove Christianity that any religion could be equally well or badly defended by them. If Lavater thought that a Socrates could have been convinced of the truth of Christianity by this treatise, he only showed what power prejudice exerts over reason.

If the evangelical consistory, before whom Mendelssohn offered to lay his letter for censorship before printing it, did not regret granting him permission to print whatever he pleased, "because they knew his wisdom and modesty to be such that he would write nothing that might give public offense," still he undoubtedly did give offense to many pious persons.

Mendelssohn's epistle to Lavater naturally made a great sensation. Since the appearance of Phædon, he belonged to the select band of authors whose works every cultivated person felt obliged to read. Besides it happened that the subject of the controversy was attractive at the time. The free-thinkers – by no means few at this time – were glad that at last some one, a Jew at that, had ventured to utter a candid word about Christianity. Owing to his obtrusiveness and presumptuous advocacy of Christianity, Lavater had many enemies. These read Mendelssohn's clever reply to the zealous conversionist with mischievous delight. The hereditary prince of Brunswick, who, as said above, was charmed with Mendelssohn, expressed (January 2, 1770) his admiration, that he had spoken "with such great tact and so high a degree of humanitarianism" upon these nice questions. Bonnet himself, less objectionable than his servile flatterer, admitted the justice of Mendelssohn's cause, and complained of Lavater's injudicious zeal. A letter of his dated January 12, 1770, was almost a triumph for Mendelssohn. He said that his dissertation, with which Lavater had desired to convert the Jew, had not been addressed to the honorable "House of Jacob," for which his heart entertained the sincerest and warmest wishes; much less had it been his intention to give the Jewish philosopher a favorable opinion of Christianity. He was full of admiration for the wisdom, the moderation, and the abilities of the famous son of Abraham. He indeed desired him to investigate Christianity, as it could only gain by being subjected to a close inquiry by the wise son of Mendel. But he did not wish to fall into Lavater's mistakes, and make it burdensome for him. However, in spite of his virtuous indignation, Bonnet perpetrated a bit of knavery against Mendelssohn. Lavater himself was obliged in a letter to publicly beg Mendelssohn's pardon for having placed him in so awkward a position, entreating him at the same time to attest that he had not intentionally been guilty of any indiscretion or perfidy. Thus Mendelssohn had an opportunity of acting magnanimously towards his opponent. On the subject proper under dispute, however, he remained firm; he did not surrender an iota of his Judaism, not even its Talmudical and Rabbinical peculiarities, and with every step his courage grew.

Mendelssohn did not wish to let pass this propitious opportunity of glorifying Judaism, which was so intensely contemned, and make it clear that it was in no way opposed to reason. Despite the warnings of timid Jews, to allow the controversy to lapse, so as not to stir up persecutions, he pointed out with growing boldness the chasm which Christianity had dug between itself and reason, whereas Judaism in its essence was in accord with reason. "The nearer I approach this so highly-esteemed religion," he wrote in his examination of Bonnet's "Palingénésie," "the more abhorrent is it to my reason." It afforded him especial delight when strictly orthodox Christians thought that they were abusing Judaism by declaring it to be equivalent to natural religion (Deism).