In truth there was something irritating to the Polish Jew in the great German's attitude, as if it held some latent reproach of his own. Only a shallow thinker, he felt, could combine culture and spiritual comfort, to say nothing of worldly success. He had read the much-vaunted _Phœdon_ which Lutheran Germany hailed as a counterblast to the notorious "Berlin religion," restoring faith to a despondent world mocked out of its Christian hopes by the fashionable French wits and materialists under the baneful inspiration of Voltaire, whom Germany's own Frederick had set on high in his Court. But what a curious assumption for a Jewish thinker to accept, that unless we are immortal, our acts in this world are of no consequence! Was not he, Maimon, leading a high-minded life in pursuit of Truth, with no such hope? "If our soul were mortal, then Reason would be a dream, which Jupiter has sent us in order that we might forget our misery; and we should be like the beasts, only to seek food and die." Nonsense! Rhetoric! True, his epistles to Lavater were effective enough, there was courage in his public refusal of Christianity, nobility in his sentiment that he preferred to shame anti-Jewish prejudice by character rather than by controversy. He, Maimon, would prefer to shame it by both. But this _Jerusalem_ of Mendelssohn's! Could its thesis really be sustained? Judaism laid no yoke upon belief, only on conduct? was no reason-confounding dogma? only a revealed legislation? A Jew gave his life to the law and his heart to Germany! Or France, or Holland, or the Brazils as the case might be? Palestine must be forgotten. Well, it was all bold and clever enough, but was it more than a half-way house to assimilation with the peoples? At any rate here was a Polish brother's artillery to meet--more deadly than that of Lavater, or the stupid Christians. Again, but with acuter anxiety, he awaited Mendelssohn's reply. It came--an invitation for next Saturday afternoon. Aha! The outworks were stormed. The great man recognized in him a worthy foe, a brother in soul. Gratitude and vanity made the visit a delightful anticipation. What a wit-combat it would be! How he would marshal his dialectic epigrams! If only Lapidoth could be there to hear!