Out of the midst of the chaos towers, like a sharply defined rock amid the formless ocean, one single people, a numerically insignificant people--the Jews. This one race has established as its guiding principle the purity of the blood; it alone possesses, therefore physiognomy and character. If we contemplate the southern and eastern centers of culture in the world-empire in its downfall, and let no sympathies or antipathies pervert our judgement, we must confess that the Jews were at that time the only people deserving respect. We may well apply to them the words of Goethe, “the faith broad, narrow the thought.” “ in comparison with Rome and still more so with Hellas their intellectual horizon appears so narrow, their mental capacity is so limited, but we seem to have a for us entirely new type of being; but the narrowness and wants of originality inside are fully counterbalance by the power of faith, faith which might be very simply defined as “faith in self.” And since this faith in self included faith in a higher being, it did not lack ethical significance. However poor the Jewish law may appear, when compared with the religious creations of the various Indo-European peoples, it possessed a unique advantage in the fallen Roman empire of that time: It was, in fact, a law; a law which men humbly obeyed, and this very obedient was bound to be of great ethical import in a world of such lawlessness. Here, as everywhere, we shall find that the influence of the Jews—for good and for evil—lies in their character, not in the intellectual achievements. Certain historians of the 19th century, even men so intellectually preeminent as Count Gobineau, have supported the view that Judaism has always had merely a disintegrating influence upon all peoples. I cannot share this conviction. In truth, where the Jews become very numerous in a strange land they may make it there object to fulfill the promises of the profits and with the best willing conscience to “consume the strange peoples”; did they not say of themselves, even in the lifetime of Moses, that they were “like locusts”? However, we must distinguish between Judaism and the Jews and admit that Judaism as an idea is one of the most conservative ideas in the world. The idea of physical race unity and rice purity, which is the very essence of Judaism, signify the recognition of a fundamental physiological fact of life; wherever we observe life from the hyphomycetes to the noble horse we see the importance of “race”; judaism made this law of nature sacred. And this is the reason why it triumphantly prevailed at that critical moment in the history of the world, when a rich legacy was waiting in vain for were the errors. It did not further, but rather put a stop to, universal disintegration. The Jewish dogma was like a sharp acid which is poured into a liquid which is being decomposed in order to clear it and keep it from further decomposition. So this acid may not be to the taste of everyone, yet it has played so decisive a part in the history of the epoch of culture to which we belong that we ought to be grateful to the giver; instead of being indignant about it, we shall do better to inform ourselves thoroughly concerning the significance of this “entrance of the jews into the history of the West,” and event which in any case exercised inestimable influence upon our whole culture, and which has not yet reached its full growth.
Nothing is so convincing as the consciousness of the possession of race. The man who belongs to a distinct, pure race, never loses the sense of it. The guardian angel of his lineage is ever at his side, supporting him where he loses his foothold, warning him that he Socratic demon where he is in danger of going astray compelling obedience, and forcing him to undertakings which, do you make them impossible, he would never have dared to attempt. Weak and erring like all that is human, a man of the stamp recognizes himself, as others recognize him, by the shyness of his character, and by the fact that his actions are marked by a certain simple And peculiar greatness, which finds its explanation in his distinctly typical and super personal qualities. Race lifts a man above himself: it in Dows him with extraordinary I might almost supernatural powers, so entirely does it distinguish him from the individual who springs from the chaotic jumble of peoples drawn from all parts of the world. And should this man up your origin be per chance gifted above his fellows, Then the fact of race strengthens and elevates him on every hand, and he becomes a genius towering over the rest of mankind, not because he has been thrown upon the earth like a flaming meteor by a freak of nature, but because he soars heavenward like some strong and stately tree, nourished by thousands and thousands of roots—No solitary individual, but the living some of untold souls striving for the same goal. He who has eyes to see at once detects race in animals. It shows itself in the whole habit of the beast, and per claims itself in a hundred peculiarities which defy analysis; may more, it proves itself by achievements, for its possession invariably leads to something excessive and out of control— even to that which is exaggerated and not free from bias. Goethe’s dictum, “only that which is extravagant makes greatness,” Is well-known. That is the very quality which a thoroughbred race reared from superior materials bestows upon its individual descendants—something “extravagant”—And, indeed, when we learn from every race horse, every thoroughbred fox terrier, every Cochin China fowl, is very lesson which the history of mankind so eloquently teaches us! It’s not the Greek in the fullness of his glory and unparalleled example of this extravagance? And do we not see this extravagance first make its appearance when immigration from the North has ceased, and the various strong breeds of men, isolated on the peninsula once and for all, begin to fuse into a new race, brighter and more brilliant, where, as in Athens, the racial blood flows from many sources— simpler and more resting where, as in Lacedaemon, even in this mixture of blood has been barred out? Is the race not as it were extinguished, as soon as fate wrests the land from its proud exclusiveness and incorporates it in a greater whole? Does not Rome teach us the same lesson? Has not it this case also a special mixture of blood produced an absolutely new race, similar in qualities and capacities to no later one, endowed with exuberant power? And does not victory in this case effect what disaster did in that, but only much more quickly? Like a cataract the stream of strange blood overflooded the almost depopulated Rome and at once the Romans ceased to be. Would one small tribe from among all the Semites have become a world-embracing power had it not made “purity of race” its inflexible fundamental law? In days when so much nonsense is talked concerning this question, let Disraeli teach us that the whole significance of Judaism lies in its purity of race, that this alone gives it power and duration, and just as it has outlived the people of antiquity, so, thanks to its knowledge of this law of nature, will it outlive the constantly mingling races of today.
What is the use of detailed scientific investigations as to whether there are distinguishable races? Whether race has a worth? How this is possible? and so on. We turn the tables and say: it is evident that there are such races; it is a fact of direct experience that the quality of the race is of vital importance; your province is only to find out the how and the wherefore, not to deny the facts themselves in order to indulge your ignorance.
Direct experience, however, offers us a series of quite different observations on race, all of which may gradually contribute to the extension of our knowledge as well as to ites definiteness. In contrast to the new, growing, Anglo-Saxon race, look, for instance, at the Sephardim, the so-called “Spanish Jews”; here we find how a genuine race can by purity keep itself noble for centuries and tens of centuries, but at the same time how very necessary it is to distinguish between the nobly reared portions of a nation and the rest. In England, Holland and Italy there are still genuine Sephardim but very few, since they can scarcely any longer avoid crossing with the Ashkenazim (the so-called “German Jews”). Thus, for example, the Montefiores of the present generation have all without exception married German Jewesses. But every one who has travelled in the East of Europe, where the genuine Sephardim still as far as possible avoid all intercourse with German Jews, for whom they have an almost comical repugnance, will agree with me when I say that it is only when one sees these men and has intercourse with them that one begins to compregend the significance of Judaism in the history of the world. This is nobility in the fullest sense of the word, genuine nobility of race! Beautiful figures, noble heads, dignity in speech and bearing. The type is Semitic in the same sense as that of certain noble Syrians and Arabs. That out of the midst of such people prohets and psalmists could arise--that I understand at the first glance, which I honestly confess that I had never succeeded in doing when I gazed, however carefully, on the many hundred young Jews--”bochers”--of the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin...
We live today in a “Jewish age”; we may think what we like about the past history of the Jews; their present history actually takes up so much room in our own history that we cannot possibly refuse to notice them. Herder in spite of his outspoken humanism has expressed the opinion that “the Jewish people is and remains in Europe an Asiatic people alien to our part of the world, bound to that old law which it received in a distant climate, and which according to its own confession it cannot do away with.” Quite correct. But this alien people, everlastingly alien, because--as Herder well remarks--it is indissolubly bound to an alien law that is hostile to all other peoples--this alien people has become precisely in the course of the nineteenth century a disproportionately important and in many spheres actually dominant constituent of our life. Even a hundred years ago that same witness had sadly to confess that the “ruder nations of Europe” were “willing slaves of Jewish usury”; today he could say the same of by far the greatest part of the civilized world. The possession of money in itself is, however, of least account; our governments, our laws, our science, our commerce, our literature, our art..practically all branches of our life have become more or less willing slaves of the Jews, and drag the feudal fetter, if not yet on two, at least on one leg. In the meantime the “alien” element emphasized by Herder has become more and more prominent; a hundred years ago it was rather indistinctly and vaguely felt; now it has asserted and proved itself, and so forced itself on the attention of even the most inattentive. The Indo-European, moved by ideal motives, opened the gates in friendship: the Jew rushed in like an enemy, stormed all positions and planted the flag of his, to us, alien nature--I will not say on the ruins, but on the breaches of our genuine individuality.
Are we for that reason to revile the Jews? That would be as ignoble as it is unworthy and senseless. The Jews deserve admiration, for they have reacted with absolute consistency according to the logic and truth of their own individuality, and never for a moment have they allowed themselves to forget the sacredness of physical laws because of foolish humanitarian day-dreams which they shared only when such a policy was to their advantage. Consider with what mastery they use the law of blood to extend their power: the principal stem remains spotless, not a drop of strange blood comes in: as it stands in the Torah, “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord”; in the meantime, however, thousands of side branches are cut off and employed to infect the Indo-Europeans with Jewish blood. If that were to go on for a few centuries, there would be in Europe only one single people of pure race, that of the Jews, all the rest would be a herd of pseudo-Hebraic mestizos, a people beyond all doubt degenerate physically, mentally and morally.