MOSES MENDELSSOHN (1729-1786) JERUSALEM; A TREATISE ON ECCLESIASTICAL Translated by M. Samuels ON PROGRESS Progress is for individual man, who is destined by Providence to pass a portion of his eternity here on earth. Every one goes his own way through life. One's route leads him over flowers and meadows; another's across desert plains, over steep mountains or by the side of dangerous precipices. Yet they all get on in the journey, pursuing the road to happiness, to which they are destined. But that the bulk, or the whole human race here on earth, should be constantly moving forth in progress of time, and perfecting itself, seems to me not to have been the design of Providence. Do you want to divine the design of Providence with man? Then forge no hypotheses; look only around you at what actually does pass-and if you can take a general view of the history of all ages— at what has passed from the beginning. That is fact: that must have belonged to the design; that must have been approved of in the plan of Wisdom, or at least have been admitted in it. Providence never misses its aim. That which actually happens must have been its design from the beginning, or have belonged to it. Now, in respect to the human race at large, you do not perceive a constant progress of improvement, that looks as if approaching nearer and nearer to perfection. On the contrary, we see the human race as a whole subject to slight swings; and it never yet made some steps forward but what it did, soon after, slide back again into its previous station, with double the celerity. Most nations of the earth pass many ages in the same degree of civilization, in the same crepusculous light, which appears much too dim for our spoiled eyes. Now and then a particle of the grand mass will kindle, become a bright star, and run through an orbit, which, now after a longer, now after a shorter period, brings it back again, to its standstill, or sets it down at no great distance from it. Man goes on; but mankind is constantly swinging to and fro, within fixed boundaries; but, considered as a whole, retains, at all periods of time, about the same degree of morality, the same quantity of religion and irreligion, of virtue and vice, of happiness and misery; the same result, when the same is taken into account against the same; of all the good and evil as much as was required for the transit of individual men, in order that they might be trained here on earth, and approach as near to perfection as was allotted and appointed to every one of them. ON LOVE OF ONE'S FELLOWS Enormous crimes are seldom perpetrated for the sake of meeting mere selfish desires, or of satisfying sensual lust only. . . . Ambition sometimes will speak louder than country or humanity; nay, at times, it is love of country itself which removes all consideration of justice and philanthropy. . . . For this, too, the remedy is nothing else but stoicism and enthusiasm: Stoicism, or a control over nearer relations, the power of lessening their impression, and bestowing on them no more interest than is due them, according to the rules of reason and of truth; and enthusiasm or the power of giving more force and energy to the more distant relations of moral life; of hearkening, like Socrates, to the voice of country and the laws, when love of life, the entreaties of friends, and the tears of one's family deprive one of one's senses; of hearkening, like Regulus, to the voice of the most rigid justice, when the pleadings of one's children, kinsmen, friends, and the country at large unite with love of life and loudly call for preservation. For the same reason, the sage will be just, nay, sometimes inexorably severe, when an ordinary goodnatured man would be compassionate; nay, when an otherwise base man would perhaps be sooner mollified. The sage loves not only what he beholds, he is not moved only by what is near, present and visible; but his affection comprehends the latest posterity, alike with those he carries in his arms; the most distant countrymen alike with those present; men in the remotest regions and times alike with his neighbours and acquaintances; he sees with the eye of the mind; and with wise moderation bestows on every relation of social life as much interest, as much of his affection, as is due to it in relation to the whole. ON ETHICS AND RELIGION The system of our duties rests on a twofold principle, on man's relation to nature, and on the creature's relation to the Creator. The former is Moral philosophy, the latter religion; and with him who is convinced of the truth, that the relations of nature are nothing else but expressions of the Divine Will, those two principles flow into one; to him the ethics of reason are sacred like religion. Nor does religion, or the relation between God and man, require of us any other duties; it only gives those same duties and obligations a sublimer sanction. God does not want our assistance, desires no service of us, no sacrifice of rights for His benefit, no surrender of our independence to His advantage. His rights can never clash or become embroiled in ours. only desires our good, the good of every individual; and that surely must consist with itself, and cannot contradict itself. ON REASON AND REVELATION He Commands of God must be reconciled with what reason teaches about Him, according to externally true principles. It certainly is not a true principle of religion that reason must be subordinate to the claims of revelation. Has God not given us reason as well as revelation? Is not that which reason once admits as true, eternal and necessary truth, and just as infallible as the Godhead, its author? Has not, on that account, the Lord Himself constituted it the sole judge of all our thoughts and actions? Revelation, therefore, neither may nor can contradict it; and whenever it does, it does so only in appearance; and we must, by searching after the universal and deeply lodged sense, try to remove the discrepancy; for God can never contradict Himself. However, in Holy Writ, He could speak only as with His children, only in a manner that could be intelligible to them, at a period when they were yet but children in understanding and in the faculty of judging. Will not a |