It seems to me that we have to do here not with a casual mistake, but with one of those facts which indicate that the national sentiment was strong enough in Maimonides to conquer even logic. If Maimonides had set out to define the term “dogma” in its purely religious sense, he could not have found the slightest justification for regarding the national belief in a future redemption as a dogma. But he felt that a national hope was necessary to the existence of the nation; and without the existence of the nation the continuance of its religion is unthinkable. It was this feeling that made him for once oblivious of logic, and prevented him from clearing up in his own mind the nature of religious dogmas in general, so that he might be able to include among them that national belief on which the nation depends for its existence, although it has no direct relation to the maintenance of religion as such.[161] So also with the belief in resurrection, by which our people has always set great store in its exile. Every individual Jew has suffered the pain of exile not merely in his own person, but as a member of his people; his indignation and grief have been excited not by his private trouble only, but by the national trouble. He could find personal consolation in the hope of eternity in paradise; but this did not blunt the edge of the national trouble, which demanded its consolation in the prospect of a bright future for the nation. In those days the individual Jew was no longer, as in ancient times, keenly conscious that successive generations were made one by the organic life of the nation; and he could not therefore find consolation in the happiness which awaited his people at the end of time, but which he himself would not share. Hence he clung to the belief in resurrection, which offered what he required—a reward to himself for his individual share of the national grief. Just as every Jew had participated, during his own lifetime, in the national sorrow, so would every Jew be privileged in the future to see with his own eyes the national consolation and redemption.[162] Thus the belief in resurrection was complementary to the belief in the Messiah. United, they gave the people heart and strength to bear the yoke of exile and to battle successfully against a sea of troubles, confident that sooner or later the haven would be reached. When, therefore, Maimonides found it written in the Mishnah (beginning of chapter _Chelek_) that he who denies resurrection forfeits eternal life, he did not feel any need to explain this statement in a sense opposed to its literal meaning, as he usually did when his system so demanded, but took it just as he found it, and made it a dogma. He satisfied his heart at the expense of his head.