George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and PhilosophyCooke, George Willis
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George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy
Cooke, George Willis
Eliot, George, 1819-1880; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the
outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the
outraged Englishman or American. 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....
"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 lighted! 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
Home, 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....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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