XVIII.(Impressions of Theophrastus Such) The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!, by George Eliot.

 

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Impressions of Theophrastus Such, 

by George Eliot. 

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XVIII. The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!

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This author, familiar for decades - her Silas Marner was read when one was in mid to late teens, and it was so obviously different, with a quality bordering on spiritual; later, her Mill On The Floss was Frank about admission and depiction of caste system of England, which was startling (most in West pretend, following Macaulay policy of equating everything bad with India and denying or falsifying everything good about her, so much so they don't realise it - not so different from what MS Clinton observed about Pakistan as she dealt with it while part of Obama administration); and then one read more, recently, when time was as much available, as were her works due to internet. 

But reading the earlier essays, especially bit of this as one reads through, and the last one more than any other, is not just starting, it's shocking,  leaving one aghast - this woman is so racist, it is Nazi in all but name. 

She couldn't be unique in this, of course - this is probably true of most of West. 

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"To take only the subject of the Jews: it would be difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about them which has not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print; but the neglect of resemblances is a common property of dulness which unites all the various points of view—the prejudiced, the puerile, the spiteful, and the abysmally ignorant."

Why do most, in West Asia as well as in West  - Europe and lands settled or colonised by Europe to almost exclusion of earlier residents - forget the most important part, even as they profess their faith weekly? Namely, that their faiths are abrahmic, rooted therefore chiefly in Judaism? That not only their son of God (or a major prophet) was Jewish, as were his parents, siblings, and whole clan, inclu6all the disciples, but the two major books are a history of Jews too, even though the latter was falsified largely when written after church compromised with Rome for sake of power, turning and blaming crucifixion on Jews, even though it's easy to see the lie (Rome had occupied Judea and israel; as for crucifixion, those was carried out every day, by roman soldiers; victims, not conductors, were Jewish; and Roman authority, while it coukdnt always blame Jews - as masters in U.S. or English in Australia would blame slaves or native Australians for every whipping or other torture, including rapes, perpetrated by the masters, invaders, colonial occupiers), it would be a lie to say Romans were forced to act according to any wish expressed by any Jew. 

In short, antisemitism is revenge by racists against the faith they are forced to profess weekly, whether on Sunday or a couple of days before - or three to five times a day, depending on the particular later abrahmic faith. 

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Brilliant discourse by George Eliot, simultaneously defending a Jewish identity and destroying arguments for antisemitism. 

"That the preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national greatness, that their revival is a sign of reviving nationality, that every heroic defender, every patriotic restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has made them his watchword, that even such a corporate existence as that of a Roman legion or an English regiment has been made valorous by memorial standards,—these are the glorious commonplaces of historic teaching at our public schools and universities, being happily ingrained in Greek and Latin classics. They have also been impressed on the world by conspicuous modern instances. That there is a free modern Greece is due—through all infiltration of other than Greek blood—to the presence of ancient Greece in the consciousness of European men; and every speaker would feel his point safe if he were to praise Byron's devotion to a cause made glorious by ideal identification with the past; hardly so, if he were to insist that the Greeks were not to be helped further because their history shows that they were anciently unsurpassed in treachery and lying, and that many modern Greeks are highly disreputable characters, while others are disposed to grasp too large a share of our commerce. The same with Italy: the pathos of his country's lot pierced the youthful soul of Mazzini, because, like Dante's, his blood was fraught with the kinship of Italian greatness, his imagination filled with a majestic past that wrought itself into a majestic future. Half a century ago, what was Italy? An idling-place of dilettanteism or of itinerant motiveless wealth, a territory parcelled out for papal sustenance, dynastic convenience, and the profit of an alien Government. What were the Italians? No people, no voice in European counsels, no massive power in European affairs: a race thought of in English and French society as chiefly adapted to the operatic stage, or to serve as models for painters; disposed to smile gratefully at the reception of halfpence; and by the more historical remembered to be rather polite than truthful, in all probability a combination of Machiavelli, Rubini, and Masaniello. Thanks chiefly to the divine gift of a memory which inspires the moments with a past, a present, and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute, all that, or most of it, is changed."

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Here's why British made up a fraudulent theory of Aryan invasion and war against Dravidian whom they fraudulently termed races (- they were never races, much less separate as people) - 

"Again, one of our living historians finds just sympathy in his vigorous insistance on our true ancestry, on our being the strongly marked heritors in language and genius of those old English seamen who, beholding a rich country with a most convenient seaboard, came, doubtless with a sense of divine warrant, and settled themselves on this or the other side of fertilising streams, gradually conquering more and more of the pleasant land from the natives who knew nothing of Odin, and finally making unusually clean work in ridding themselves of those prior occupants. ... "

But times change, and now, not only Welsh but Scots too have debated independence to extent they find comfortable; while former have resurrected their language, once forbidden even at home, latter have cited on independence from U.K.. 

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"True, we are not indebted to those ancestors for our religion: we are rather proud of having got that illumination from elsewhere. ... "

Why not admit it? Religion came from Jews, via Rome because Rome had occupied Judea, just as algebra came from India - as did numerals, and concept of zero - via arabs, who were traders travelling the silk route, trading, collecting manuscripts, and thus, along with Jews, preserved and transmitted knowledge (renaissance was only possible due to the manuscripts copied and preserved by Arabs and jews). 

" ... The men who planted our nation were not Christians, though they began their work centuries after Christ; and they had a decided objection to Christianity when it was first proposed to them: they were not monotheists, and their religion was the reverse of spiritual. ... "

Equating monotheism with virtue is as false as a firm beluef that pole star is "above", or holding up Sun as the only, unique, source of light; and it's not even a great concept unless perception of Reality is admitted, which a male trinity makes a mockery of in every way. Holding your own, limited, faith above those of others, is no different from racism, just as holding males above females - as abrahmic cultures do - is merely animal law where physical force is above all else. 

Racism is rampant in "religion was the reverse of spiritual.", and while nobody has yet openly admitted either that building tall structures is not superior achievement, nor admitted that modern Europe is inferior, nor have they understood just what ancient stupendous structures throughout the world were, much less how they were built - Stonehenge, pyramids, and much more. If they arent evidence of inferiority of subsequent cultures, cathedrals are positively stupid. 

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"The Red Indians, not liking us when we settled among them, might have been willing to fling such facts in our faces, but they were too ignorant, and besides, their opinions did not signify, because we were able, if we liked, to exterminate them."

If? " ... because we were able, if we liked, to exterminate them.""??? Wasnt it proved in action? They are now penned like animals in a zoo without a fence, but penned they are, if they choose not to assimilate and convert; that is, wghat remains of them. And in South of Panama, they are slaves in all but name. 

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This is not merely false, it's abusive too. 

And, of course, rabidly racist, almost Nazi in it's ignorance and pugnacious attitude. 

" ... The Hindoos also have doubtless had their rancours against us and still entertain enough ill-will to make unfavourable remarks on our character, especially as to our historic rapacity and arrogant notions of our own superiority; they perhaps do not admire the usual English profile, and they are not converted to our way of feeding: but though we are a small number of an alien race profiting by the territory and produce of these prejudiced people, they are unable to turn us out; at least, when they tried we showed them their mistake. We do not call ourselves a dispersed and a punished people: we are a colonising people, and it is we who have punished others."

How times change! She coukdnt have foreseen that her philosophy would be taken by nazis, perfected, and used right there in Europe; that triumph over them cost colonial expansionism; that by the time Brits left, they couldn't possibly be fraudulently portrayed as merely humans dealing with animals, but were exposed as killers of innocent, in hundreds, thousands, millions; and they caused deaths of tens of millions by leaving India after dividing it, so they were cowards exposed as such. Shameful Flight, anyone? 

Virtues of British?!!! Go just ask Irish, if you are racist and don't think India deserves a fair treatment. They too suffered most of what India did. 

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" ... A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and gradual growth through past labours and struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and wellbeing thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its institutions. ... "

And yet she respects Macaulay, who put in place an explicitly stated policy of fraudulent propaganda against India, badmouthing every good or great thing about India, so as to kill the spirit of India and to enslave people. Nazis indeed, until Germany perfected and turned it against them, conquering far more of Europe than anyone else. 

" ... It is this living force of sentiment in common which makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. ... "

As India did, before, during and after George Eliot lived, while she is here glorifying her nation behaving like hyenas tearing up other people, whether during her times or in history. 

" ... An individual man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, if not in actual existence yet existing in the past, in memory, as a departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to suffice for social energy. ... "

Why carp about India disliking English, which was due to the misbehaviour of the British, and why pretend it was about unreasonable reaction to "profile" rather than arrogant, beastly behaviour indulged in by British in India?

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" ... I am not bound to feel for a Chinaman as I feel for my fellow-countryman: I am bound not to demoralise him with opium, not to compel him to my will by destroying or plundering the fruits of his labour on the alleged ground that he is not cosmopolitan enough, and not to insult him for his want of my tailoring and religion when he appears as a peaceable visitor on the London pavement. ... "

Opium wars were, in fact, about West asserting right to sell opium to China (legally prohibited in China), which Brits forced India to grow, empoverishing India in every way. U.S. did the same to Afghanistan in recent decades, discouraged planting food grains and encouraging opium planting. 

No wonder they - China, Afghanistan, West Asia, .... - hate West. 

And the Vidambanaa - is there an approximately sufficient word in English? - is, that West fails to see, fails completely to see, the benevolence, the love, the complete lack of s servility (and consequent hatred), that emanates from india - in a way that a stupid male teenager fails to value hus mother, but gives importance to the gangsters out there. 

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" ... It is admirable in a Briton with a good purpose to learn Chinese, but it would not be a proof of fine intellect in him to taste Chinese poetry in the original more than he tastes the poetry of his own tongue. ... "

If it's true, that truth must be universal; and yet, English speakers not only are racist against those of rest of the world, but fail to comprehend why other Europeans dislike them for not learning other languages and behaving as if it's a favour to others if they do (however imcompetently), hate their English speakers' - arrogance in expecting everyone to speak and understand English, despise them for their presumptuous conduct when not at home. 

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" ... Affection, intelligence, duty, radiate from a centre, and nature has decided that for us English folk that centre can be neither China nor Peru. Most of us feel this unreflectingly; for the affectation of undervaluing everything native, and being too fine for one's own country, belongs only to a few minds of no dangerous leverage. What is wanting is, that we should recognise a corresponding attachment to nationality as legitimate in every other people, and understand that its absence is a privation of the greatest good."

Again, if it's true, it must be universal; so if you can't be willing to see others as equal humans, stay home. 

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"For, to repeat, not only the nobleness of a nation depends on the presence of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each individual citizen. Our dignity and rectitude are proportioned to our sense of relationship with something great, admirable, pregnant with high possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to self-repression and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and more attractive to our generous part than the securing of personal ease or prosperity. And a people possessing this good should surely feel not only a ready sympathy with the effort of those who, having lost the good, strive to regain it, but a profound pity for any degradation resulting from its loss; nay, something more than pity when happier nationalities have made victims of the unfortunate whose memories nevertheless are the very fountain to which the persecutors trace their most vaunted blessings."

This is so close to the Nazi sentiment that one wouldn't be surprised if this had, in fact, inspired them, however indirectly. 

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" ... The European world has long been used to consider the Jews as altogether exceptional, and it has followed naturally enough that they have been excepted from the rules of justice and mercy, which are based on human likeness. But to consider a people whose ideas have determined the religion of half the world, and that the more cultivated half, and who made the most eminent struggle against the power of Rome, as a purely exceptional race, is a demoralising offence against rational knowledge, a stultifying inconsistency in historical interpretation. Every nation of forcible character—i.e., of strongly marked characteristics, is so far exceptional. The distinctive note of each bird-species is in this sense exceptional, but the necessary ground of such distinction is a deeper likeness. The superlative peculiarity in the Jews admitted, our affinity with them is only the more apparent when the elements of their peculiarity are discerned."

Read this bit again - 

" ... But to consider a people whose ideas have determined the religion of half the world, and that the more cultivated half, and who made the most eminent struggle against the power of Rome, as a purely exceptional race, is a demoralising offence against rational knowledge, a stultifying inconsistency in historical interpretation. ... "

And here's both racism and antisemitism - even though shes admitting the roman occu6,Jewish struggle, and Judaic roots of her faith, to which she admits ascribing her civilisation, which she considers superior to all others. Nevertheless, it's "a demoralising offence against rational knowledge" "to consider a people whose ideas have determined the religion of half the world, and that the more cultivated half" "as a purely exceptional race" - but George Eliot stating superiority of English is not "a demoralising offence against rational knowledge"????!!!!!

If that wasn't irrational, what is? How else does one categorise irrational, for ordinary definition for use of normal discourse, or even philosophy? (Obviously she's not speaking mathematics!)

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"From whatever point of view the writings of the Old Testament may be regarded, the picture they present of a national development is of high interest and speciality, nor can their historic momentousness be much affected by any varieties of theory as to the relation they bear to the New Testament or to the rise and constitution of Christianity. Whether we accept the canonical Hebrew books as a revelation or simply as part of an ancient literature, makes no difference to the fact that we find there the strongly characterised portraiture of a people educated from an earlier or later period to a sense of separateness unique in its intensity, a people taught by many concurrent influences to identify faithfulness to its national traditions with the highest social and religious blessings. Our too scanty sources of Jewish history, from the return under Ezra to the beginning of the desperate resistance against Rome, show us the heroic and triumphant struggle of the Maccabees, which rescued the religion and independence of the nation from the corrupting sway of the Syrian Greeks, adding to the glorious sum of its memorials, and stimulating continuous efforts of a more peaceful sort to maintain and develop that national life which the heroes had fought and died for, by internal measures of legal administration and public teaching. ... "

Right, now think India where she writes Jews or Israel- all but migration - and English where she says Syrian Greeks. It fits. For bible, there are far greater treasures of India, but if those she's ignorant. West, in general, is ignorant. 

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" ... Thenceforth the virtuous elements of the Jewish life were engaged, as they had been with varying aspects during the long and changeful prophetic period and the restoration under Ezra, on the side of preserving the specific national character against a demoralising fusion with that of foreigners whose religion and ritual were idolatrous and often obscene. ... "

And yet she fails to understand how obscene their own religion and rituals are, even when they partake of a Jewish man's blood and flesh - every Sunday, even if symbolically. Did Romans indulge in cannibalism while occupying other lands? 

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" ... There was always a Foreign party reviling the National party as narrow, and sometimes manifesting their own breadth in extensive views of advancement or profit to themselves by flattery of a foreign power. ... "

Familiar! And the Brits in India set up their caste system, comprising of layers added to the British caste system, whereby this "Foreign party" including all non-Hindu Indians was set up above all majority of India, exceptions being those who were willing to side with Brits and treat India abominably. It was quite complex, too, this British caste system for India, based on caste system of England. 

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" ... Such internal conflict naturally tightened the bands of conservatism, which needed to be strong if it were to rescue the sacred ark, the vital spirit of a small nation—"the smallest of the nations"—whose territory lay on the highway between three continents; and when the dread and hatred of foreign sway had condensed itself into dread and hatred of the Romans, many Conservatives became Zealots, whose chief mark was that they advocated resistance to the death against the submergence of their nationality. Much might be said on this point towards distinguishing the desperate struggle against a conquest which is regarded as degradation and corruption, from rash, hopeless insurrection against an established native government; and for my part (if that were of any consequence) I share the spirit of the Zealots. ... "

And she still fails to see it all mirrored in India subjugated by British, resisting, fighting back - there she turns Pontius Pilate, favouring crucifixion of Indians, "teaching them" who was superior. Why then fight nazis? Wasn't theirs the identical principle, with victor and subject changed? 

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George Eliot doesn't mind convoluted, twisted logic to suit her purpose - 

"We have not been noted for forming a low estimate of ourselves in comparison with foreigners, or for admitting that our institutions are equalled by those of any other people under the sun. Many of us have thought that our sea-wall is a specially divine arrangement to make and keep us a nation of sea-kings after the manner of our forefathers, secure against invasion and able to invade other lands when we need them, though they may lie on the other side of the ocean. Again, it has been held that we have a peculiar destiny as a Protestant people, not only able to bruise the head of an idolatrous Christianity in the midst of us, but fitted as possessors of the most truth and the most tonnage to carry our purer religion over the world and convert mankind to our way of thinking. The Puritans, asserting their liberty to restrain tyrants, found the Hebrew history closely symbolical of their feelings and purpose; and it can hardly be correct to cast the blame of their less laudable doings on the writings they invoked, since their opponents made use of the same writings for different ends, finding there a strong warrant for the divine right of kings and the denunciation of those who, like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, took on themselves the office of the priesthood which belonged of right solely to Aaron and his sons, or, in other words, to men ordained by the English bishops. We must rather refer the passionate use of the Hebrew writings to affinities of disposition between our own race and the Jewish. Is it true that the arrogance of a Jew was so immeasurably beyond that of a Calvinist? And the just sympathy and admiration which we give to the ancestors who resisted the oppressive acts of our native kings, and by resisting rescued or won for us the best part of our civil and religious liberties—is it justly to be withheld from those brave and steadfast men of Jewish race who fought and died, or strove by wise administration to resist, the oppression and corrupting influences of foreign tyrants, and by resisting rescued the nationality which was the very hearth of our own religion? At any rate, seeing that the Jews were more specifically than any other nation educated into a sense of their supreme moral value, the chief matter of surprise is that any other nation is found to rival them in this form of self-confidence."

How does she negate the relationship of home and land with native, equating what she sees as rights invaders in case of English, with rights of Jews against Rome? Only to suit her purpose, establishing equivalence between Jewish and protestant as two superior races! 

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" ... As the slave-holders in the United States counted the curse on Ham a justification of negro slavery, so the curse on the Jews was counted a justification for hindering them from pursuing agriculture and handicrafts; for marking them out as execrable figures by a peculiar dress; for torturing them to make them part with their gains, or for more gratuitously spitting at them and pelting them; for taking it as certain that they killed and ate babies, poisoned the wells, and took pains to spread the plague; for putting it to them whether they would be baptised or burned, and not failing to burn and massacre them when they were obstinate; but also for suspecting them of disliking the baptism when they had got it, and then burning them in punishment of their insincerity; finally, for hounding them by tens on tens of thousands from the homes where they had found shelter for centuries, and inflicting on them the horrors of a new exile and a new dispersion. All this to avenge the Saviour of mankind, or else to compel these stiff-necked people to acknowledge a Master whose servants showed such beneficent effects of His teaching."

Is she totally obtuse? "avenge the Saviour"? Wasnt he crucified by Rome, as were thousands of other Jews? For the struggle against Rome? Never mind the official lie spread by Rome! Persecution of Jews by Europe is merely continuation of that by Rome, coupled with racism. Unless one labels it correctly as persecution of superior by inferior. 

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" ... An oppressive government and a persecuting religion, while breeding vices in those who hold power, are well known to breed answering vices in those who are powerless and suffering. ... "

How does she fail to see India oppressed by Brits in this sentence? How does she presume stating India hates English for their profiles? Blind! Blinded by colour of skin, or need of robbing India? 

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" ... The Jews, it is said, resisted the expansion of their own religion into Christianity; they were in the habit of spitting on the cross; they have held the name of Christ to be Anathema. Who taught them that? The men who made Christianity a curse to them: the men who made the name of Christ a symbol for the spirit of vengeance, and, what was worse, made the execution of the vengeance a pretext for satisfying their own savageness, greed, and envy: the men who sanctioned with the name of Christ a barbaric and blundering copy of pagan fatalism in taking the words "His blood be upon us and on our children" as a divinely appointed verbal warrant for wreaking cruelty from generation to generation on the people from whose sacred writings Christ drew His teaching. Strange retrogression in the professors of an expanded religion, boasting an illumination beyond the spiritual doctrine of Hebrew prophets! For Hebrew prophets proclaimed a God who demanded mercy rather than sacrifices. The Christians also believed that God delighted not in the blood of rams and of bulls, but they apparently conceived Him as requiring for His satisfaction the sighs and groans, the blood and roasted flesh of men whose forefathers had misunderstood the metaphorical character of prophecies which spoke of spiritual pre-eminence under the figure of a material kingdom. Was this the method by which Christ desired His title to the Messiahship to be commended to the hearts and understandings of the nation in which He was born? Many of His sayings bear the stamp of that patriotism which places fellow-countrymen in the inner circle of affection and duty. And did the words "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do," refer only to the centurion and his band, a tacit exception being made of every Hebrew there present from the mercy of the Father and the compassion of the Son?—nay, more, of every Hebrew yet to come who remained unconverted after hearing of His claim to the Messiahship, not from His own lips or those of His native apostles, but from the lips of alien men whom cross, creed, and baptism had left cruel, rapacious, and debauched? It is more reverent to Christ to believe that He must have approved the Jewish martyrs who deliberately chose to be burned or massacred rather than be guilty of a blaspheming lie, more than He approved the rabble of crusaders who robbed and murdered them in His name. But these remonstrances seem to have no direct application to personages who take up the attitude of philosophic thinkers and discriminating critics, professedly accepting Christianity from a rational point of view as a vehicle of the highest religious and moral truth, and condemning the Jews on the ground that they are obstinate adherents of an outworn creed, maintain themselves in moral alienation from the peoples with whom they share citizenship, and are destitute of real interest in the welfare of the community and state with which they are thus identified. These anti-Judaic advocates usually belong to a party which has felt itself glorified in winning for Jews, as well as Dissenters and Catholics, the full privileges of citizenship, laying open to them every path to distinction. At one time the voice of this party urged that differences of creed were made dangerous only by the denial of citizenship—that you must make a man a citizen before he could feel like one. At present, apparently, this confidence has been succeeded by a sense of mistake: there is a regret that no limiting clauses were insisted on, such as would have hindered the Jews from coming too far and in too large proportion along those opened pathways; and the Roumanians are thought to have shown an enviable wisdom in giving them as little chance as possible. But then, the reflection occurring that some of the most objectionable Jews are baptised Christians, it is obvious that such clauses would have been insufficient, and the doctrine that you can turn a Jew into a good Christian is emphatically retracted. ... that they have suffered an inward degradation stamping them as morally inferior, and—"serve them right," since they rejected Christianity. All which is mirrored in an analogy, namely, that of the Irish, also a servile race, who have rejected Protestantism though it has been repeatedly urged on them by fire and sword and penal laws, and whose place in the moral scale may be judged by our advertisements, where the clause, "No Irish need apply," parallels the sentence which for many polite persons sums up the question of Judaism—"I never did like the Jews.""

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" ... If they drop that separateness which is made their reproach, they may be in danger of lapsing into a cosmopolitan indifference equivalent to cynicism, and of missing that inward identification with the nationality immediately around them which might make some amends for their inherited privation. No dispassionate observer can deny this danger. Why, our own countrymen who take to living abroad without purpose or function to keep up their sense of fellowship in the affairs of their own land are rarely good specimens of moral healthiness; still, the consciousness of having a native country, the birthplace of common memories and habits of mind, existing like a parental hearth quitted but beloved; the dignity of being included in a people which has a part in the comity of nations and the growing federation of the world; that sense of special belonging which is the root of human virtues, both public and private,—all these spiritual links may preserve migratory Englishmen from the worst consequences of their voluntary dispersion. ... Tortured, flogged, spit upon, the corpus vile on which rage or wantonness vented themselves with impunity, their name flung at them as an opprobrium by superstition, hatred, and contempt, they have remained proud of their origin. Does any one call this an evil pride? Perhaps he belongs to that order of man who, while he has a democratic dislike to dukes and earls, wants to make believe that his father was an idle gentleman, when in fact he was an honourable artisan, or who would feel flattered to be taken for other than an Englishman. It is possible to be too arrogant about our blood or our calling, but that arrogance is virtue compared with such mean pretence. The pride which identifies us with a great historic body is a humanising, elevating habit of mind, inspiring sacrifices of individual comfort, gain, or other selfish ambition, for the sake of that ideal whole; and no man swayed by such a sentiment can become completely abject. That a Jew of Smyrna, where a whip is carried by passengers ready to flog off the too officious specimens of his race, can still be proud to say, "I am a Jew," is surely a fact to awaken admiration in a mind capable of understanding what we may call the ideal forces in human history. And again, a varied, impartial observation of the Jews in different countries tends to the impression that they have a predominant kindliness which must have been deeply ingrained in the constitution of their race to have outlasted the ages of persecution and oppression. The concentration of their joys in domestic life has kept up in them the capacity of tenderness: the pity for the fatherless and the widow, the care for the women and the little ones, blent intimately with their religion, is a well of mercy that cannot long or widely be pent up by exclusiveness. And the kindliness of the Jew overflows the line of division between him and the Gentile. On the whole, one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of this scattered people, made for ages "a scorn and a hissing" is, that after being subjected to this process, which might have been expected to be in every sense deteriorating and vitiating, they have come out of it (in any estimate which allows for numerical proportion) rivalling the nations of all European countries in healthiness and beauty of physique, in practical ability, in scientific and artistic aptitude, and in some forms of ethical value. A significant indication of their natural rank is seen in the fact that at this moment, the leader of the Liberal party in Germany is a Jew, the leader of the Republican party in France is a Jew, and the head of the Conservative ministry in England is a Jew. And here it is that we find the ground for the obvious jealousy which is now stimulating the revived expression of old antipathies. "The Jews," it is felt, "have a dangerous tendency to get the uppermost places not only in commerce but in political life. Their monetary hold on governments is tending to perpetuate in leading Jews a spirit of universal alienism (euphemistically called cosmopolitanism), even where the West has given them a full share in civil and political rights. A people with oriental sunlight in their blood, yet capable of being everywhere acclimatised, they have a force and toughness which enables them to carry off the best prizes; and their wealth is likely to put half the seats in Parliament at their disposal.""

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"Do they propose as a remedy for the impending danger of our healthier national influences getting overridden by Jewish predominance, that we should repeal our emancipatory laws? Not all the Germanic immigrants who have been settling among us for generations, and are still pouring in to settle, are Jews, but thoroughly Teutonic and more or less Christian craftsmen, mechanicians, or skilled and erudite functionaries; and the Semitic Christians who swarm among us are dangerously like their unconverted brethren in complexion, persistence, and wealth. Then there are the Greeks who, by the help of Phoenician blood or otherwise, are objectionably strong in the city. Some judges think that the Scotch are more numerous and prosperous here in the South than is quite for the good of us Southerners; and the early inconvenience felt under the Stuarts of being quartered upon by a hungry, hard-working people with a distinctive accent and form of religion, and higher cheek-bones than English taste requires, has not yet been quite neutralised. As for the Irish, it is felt in high quarters that we have always been too lenient towards them;—at least, if they had been harried a little more there might not have been so many of them on the English press, of which they divide the power with the Scotch, thus driving many Englishmen to honest and ineloquent labour. 

"So far shall we be carried if we go in search of devices to hinder people of other blood than our own from getting the advantage of dwelling among us. 

"Let it be admitted that it is a calamity to the English, as to any other great historic people, to undergo a premature fusion with immigrants of alien blood; that its distinctive national characteristics should be in danger of obliteration by the predominating quality of foreign settlers. I not only admit this, I am ready to unite in groaning over the threatened danger. To one who loves his native language, who would delight to keep our rich and harmonious English undefiled by foreign accent, foreign intonation, and those foreign tinctures of verbal meaning which tend to confuse all writing and discourse, it is an affliction as harassing as the climate, that on our stage, in our studios, at our public and private gatherings, in our offices, warehouses, and workshops, we must expect to hear our beloved English with its words clipped, its vowels stretched and twisted, its phrases of acquiescence and politeness, of cordiality, dissidence or argument, delivered always in the wrong tones, like ill-rendered melodies, marred beyond recognition; that there should be a general ambition to speak every language except our mother English, which persons "of style" are not ashamed of corrupting with slang, false foreign equivalents, and a pronunciation that crushes out all colour from the vowels and jams them between jostling consonants. ... "

Why be blind to India disliking invaders for the same reason? Because if she were to admit this, or that they had no right to loot India, they'd have to return amounts stolen and compensate for lives lost? 

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Coming closer to truth, and flitting away - 

" ... Are we to adopt the exclusiveness for which we have punished the Chinese? Are we to tear the glorious flag of hospitality which has made our freedom the world-wide blessing of the oppressed? It is not agreeable to find foreign accents and stumbling locutions passing from the piquant exception to the general rule of discourse. But to urge on that account that we should spike away the peaceful foreigner, would be a view of international relations not in the long-run favourable to the interests of our fellow-countrymen; for we are at least equal to the races we call obtrusive in the disposition to settle wherever money is to be made and cheaply idle living to be found. ... "

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"The only point in this connection on which Englishmen are agreed is, that England itself shall not be subject to foreign rule. The fiery resolve to resist invasion, though with an improvised array of pitchforks, is felt to be virtuous, and to be worthy of a historic people. Why? Because there is a national life in our veins. Because there is something specifically English which we feel to be supremely worth striving for, worth dying for, rather than living to renounce it. Because we too have our share—perhaps a principal share—in that spirit of separateness which has not yet done its work in the education of mankind, which has created the varying genius of nations, and, like the Muses, is the offspring of memory."

Over and over, she fails to see that India fighting British occupation was just as correct, and not about any profile! So was China resisting West forcing opium on China, and calling the opium wars "punish China" is arrogance indeed. Victory in one war or battle isn't about moral right, and if it were so, males would be justified looking at every female as an object for usage as and when required, unless occupied by someone stronger! There would be no sanctity of either the person or anybody's marriage. 

But then, this can't be foreign to George Eliot, she's after all declaring pride in English history from invasion of British Isles onward, and is familiar with droit de seigneur. Why else mention Macaulay's disgusting reference to India, instead of simply mentioning Henry the VIIth?!!! 

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" ... There is understood to be a peculiar odour from the negro body, and we know that some persons, too rationalistic to feel bound by the curse on Ham, used to hint very strongly that this odour determined the question on the side of negro slavery."

Now why didn't it occur to George Eliot that it might be the odour, not profile, of the English that couldn't be offensive? After all the English are proud to state they don't shower every day, just as Bavarian are - and Indians, especially Hindus, not only must bathe every morning before intake of any food, but also wear fresh, washed clothes. (A Bavarian stated that India must be very dirty, because he didn't wash every day, and didn't change into fresh clothes more than once a month; Han Suyin makes the same observation about Chinese reluctance to bathe more than once a year, so China must be much cleaner than Germany, I had informed him.)

Did it never occur to her that odour, even objectionable odour, is - just possibly, very likely, more than average - mutual? 

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"And this is the usual level of thinking in polite society concerning the Jews. Apart from theological purposes, it seems to be held surprising that anybody should take an interest in the history of a people whose literature has furnished all our devotional language; and if any reference is made to their past or future destinies some hearer is sure to state as a relevant fact which may assist our judgment, that she, for her part, is not fond of them, having known a Mr Jacobson who was very unpleasant, or that he, for his part, thinks meanly of them as a race, though on inquiry you find that he is so little acquainted with their characteristics that he is astonished to learn how many persons whom he has blindly admired and applauded are Jews to the backbone. Again, men who consider themselves in the very van of modern advancement, knowing history and the latest philosophies of history, indicate their contemptuous surprise that any one should entertain the destiny of the Jews as a worthy subject, by referring to Moloch and their own agreement with the theory that the religion of Jehovah was merely a transformed Moloch-worship, while in the same breath they are glorifying "civilisation" as a transformed tribal existence of which some lineaments are traceable in grim marriage customs of the native Australians. Are these erudite persons prepared to insist that the name "Father" should no longer have any sanctity for us, because in their view of likelihood our Aryan ancestors were mere improvers on a state of things in which nobody knew his own father?"

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"Some of us consider this question dismissed when they have said that the wealthiest Jews have no desire to forsake their European palaces, and go to live in Jerusalem. But in a return from exile, in the restoration of a people, the question is not whether certain rich men will choose to remain behind, but whether there will be found worthy men who will choose to lead the return. Plenty of prosperous Jews remained in Babylon when Ezra marshalled his band of forty thousand and began a new glorious epoch in the history of his race, making the preparation for that epoch in the history of the world which has been held glorious enough to be dated from for evermore. The hinge of possibility is simply the existence of an adequate community of feeling as well as widespread need in the Jewish race, and the hope that among its finer specimens there may arise some men of instruction and ardent public spirit, some new Ezras, some modern Maccabees, who will know how to use all favouring outward conditions, how to triumph by heroic example, over the indifference of their fellows and the scorn of their foes, and will steadfastly set their faces towards making their people once more one among the nations."

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"Formerly, evangelical orthodoxy was prone to dwell on the fulfilment of prophecy in the "restoration of the Jews," Such interpretation of the prophets is less in vogue now. The dominant mode is to insist on a Christianity that disowns its origin, that is not a substantial growth having a genealogy, but is a vaporous reflex of modern notions. The Christ of Matthew had the heart of a Jew—"Go ye first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The Apostle of the Gentiles had the heart of a Jew: "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came." Modern apostles, extolling Christianity, are found using a different tone: they prefer the mediaeval cry translated into modern phrase. But the mediaeval cry too was in substance very ancient—more ancient than the days of Augustus. Pagans in successive ages said, "These people are unlike us, and refuse to be made like us: let us punish them." The Jews were steadfast in their separateness, and through that separateness Christianity was born. A modern book on Liberty has maintained that from the freedom of individual men to persist in idiosyncrasies the world may be enriched. Why should we not apply this argument to the idiosyncrasy of a nation, and pause in our haste to hoot it down? ... "

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And herein the genesis of Daniel Deronda. 

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But both George Eliot and Upton Sinclair, with all the professing of sympathy and regard, nevertheless profess, too, a separation. Daniel with all interaction with Gwendolyn nevertheless does not love her or respect her, and can only marry the Jewish girl he rescued. And Lanny Budd might encourage a half sister Bess to marry Hansi, but arranges his own daughter to meet a son of Eric Pomeroy-Nelson, before she can meet her childhood playmate, son of the brother of Hansi who was murdered by nazis. As for Bess, she must come to grief, although it's shown as her fault, not Hansi's, and hand I can only find happiness with another, of his own. 

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September 21, 2021 - September 21, 2021. 

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