Section 117

more powerfully affected the Orientalism of his coun- trymen than these elforts of Mendelssohn for Biblical criticism from a modern Platonic stand-point. The new HKulium of vision broiij^ht new insight; critical inquiry took the place of fanaticism; the divergences of Shemitic and European thought proved not so irreconcilable after all. Cabalism and other kindred superstitions quietly dropped out of sight ; the old dialectical barbarism was extiri)ated ; the Jews who read his Scriptures in the translation attained purity of idiom, and with it the ])0wer of appreciating the writings of the great minds of German}', to whom they had remained strangers. Ere long the best minds of the race became thoroughly associated with the intellectual movement of (Jermaiiy, content to abandon mystical ambitions and theocratic pretensions, and to hnd their Canaan in Europe. Men- delssohn's next work declared more clearly (though al- ways with ia degree of vagueness) his own ideas on re- ligion than any other work hitherto published. It was written in answer to the treatise of his friend the coun- cillor Dohm {Ueber die burf/erUche Verbesserung der Ju- di'ii). Tlie statesman in his work "had started from the principle that every amenilment must proceed from liberty and equality of rights in society bestowed upon the Jew; from an entire reform in the systems of in- struction and education; from free admission to the practice of all aris and sciences, and even a participa- tion in some posts and oflices of state ; the authority of the synagogue over its members to be maintained, in cases of religious difference, by the power of casting them out of its bosom for a time or entirely." On this last point Mendelssohn took exception. He woukl not allow the synagogue or any other religious society to impose any restriction whatever on the rights of think- ing and teaching. In the preface to his German trans- lation of jNIanasseh ben-Israel's (q. v.) Sulfation of Is- rael, he plainly declared his conviction " that every so- ciety liad certainly the right to exclude its members when they ceased to conform to the principle of the so- ciety ; but that this rule could not in any way apply to a religious society, whether church or synagogue, be- cause true religion exerts no authority over ideas and oi)inions, but, being all heart and spirit, only desires to use tlie power of conviction ; and Jews especially should take from Christians, among whom they live, an exam- ple of charity, and not of hatred or intolerance, and be- gin by loving and bearing with each other, that they might themselves be loved and tolerated by others." The influence produced by the writings of Mendelssohn was to destroy all respect for the Talmud and tlie rab- binical writers among the Jews, who approved his opin- ions. This is the more remarkable, inasmuch as Men- delssohn professed all the while to be himself an admir- er of those works; and this obvious inconsistency called forth a publication entitled Kin Brief an Jlendelsso/in, in wliicli this contradiction was clearly pointed out, and the assertion made that he was in reality a Christian, withiiiit having the courage to avow his true sentiments. To this attack he replied by his Jerustalem, oder itbcr ri'Ii'jii.fc. Maeht uiid .Indent hum (Berlin, 1783), in which he contended that " the state, which has the right to compel actions, cannot justly attempt to constrain its citizens to unanimity in thought and sentiment ; it should, however, seek by wise provisions to produce those sentiments from which good actions spring. Bc- ligious differences should not prejudice civil equality ; the true ideal is not unity, but freedom of belief." He says, "All religion is solely a matter of the heart, and shoidd not be under any control, either of the State, Church, or Synagogue ;" while at the same time he in- sists that " the law of Moses was not a law of faith, but merely of statutes and prohibitions." " Whatever may have caused the inward struggles of the philosopher of Berlin," says Da Costa, "it is certain that, without wishing or suspecting it, ^Mendelssohn — as, six centuries earlier, ^laimonides — stirred up among his co-religion- ists a feeling of void." Soon, however, Mendelssohn