The Jewish outlook., September 16, 1904, Image 1

About The Jewish outlook. (Denver, Colo.) 1903-1913

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The JEWISH OUTLOOK
A Weehly Journal Devoted to tKo Jewish Communities of the RooKy ‘
PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY
Volume i
INTELLECTUALISM
When culture reaches a certain height
it may he considered ripe; when it goes
beyond it is overripe. The cultivation
of the intellect having outsti ipped that
of character, the former ceases to be sub
servient to the latter (as it would be in
a condition of health), and becomes dom
inating. The virtues of truthfulness,
justice, independence, manliness —both
in rule and obedience —in brief the ele
mental virtues springing from the will,
the character, are weakened and replaced
by subtlety, acumen, refinement, criti
cism and ultimately cynicism. When
things reach such a pass they cannot go
on much longer. They tend to disinteg
ration. The structure of society cannot
be built on intellectualism. The attempts
to prop up the tottering edifice are
doomed to futility because of a failure
to appreciate the essential nature of the
trouble. In such times individuals have
been known to seek refuge in other re
ligions; especially in antiquity when “re
ligion” had a larger connotation than at
present and corresponded to our “civi
lization.” Judaism, compared with Greek
civilization was less ‘worldly and there
fore healthier. It naturally attracted
many proselytes. But it was the Juda
ism of the diaspora, remote from the
center of the contending schools at
home, with their logomachies and quib
bles and subtleties and shibboleths; it
was this Judaism because of its lack of
“learning” that held firmly to the sal
Denver, Colorado, Friday, September 16, 1904
ient, healthy, simple features of its heri
tage, and which offered precisely that
which Grecian culture was wanting. But
Judaism at home was in its own peculiar
way suffering from ft disease not alto
gether unlike that of the Greek world.
Its primitive prophetic simplicity, which
had co-operated with the elemental forces
of character, had to submit to compro
mise and dilution with noil-prophetic ele
ments, which, with the fatality of a dis
ease-germ, evoked a complex casuistry,
a vain and quibbling subtlety—the same
old canker of intellectualisin, though in a
different form.
To-day was it borne in upon me with
exceptional clearness and force, that the
great, perhaps the most important, line
of cleavage in mankind is that which di
vides between religious and non-relig
ious: and this line is not at all coincident
with those dividing Jew from Christian,
Muslim from Brahmin, etc. These latter
I take to be accidents. The essential
thing—the religious temperament, innate
or acquired—will express itself differ
ently in different confessions, itself re
maining the same. We similarly recog
nize the fundamental unity of intellect
ual force in the keen mathematician and
in the profound philosopher, though re
gions of its manifestation differ. Has
this temperament achieved its highest de
Religion
velopment in antiquity? v J more than
liis philosophy. Unless, indeed, religion
was a revelation, in the orthodox sense of
the term. But then development were jus
much out of the question jus it would be
in connection with Pallas who leapt forth
panoplied from the head of Zeus. But
nolentes volentes, the evidence of those
haughty orthodox claims is daily becom
ing less trustworthy. If there be any
truth in history, in experience, in science,
religion is a growth, even as science and
art are: nay, jus are the trees, the rocks,
the solar system, out of primitive chaos.
Ih who planted the love of sweet melody
in the heart of man, there to grow
through countless ages, and eventually
to ripen into the glories of Handel’s Mes
siah. or Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony;
He who has planted the seeds of curios
ity into the breast of the lowest savage,
destining it to develop into that overmas
tering craving for ever grander and
deeper knowledge, of which our observa
tories, laboratories, libraries are the si
lent witnesses; He also has planted in
man the seeds of fear, and love, and hope,
and a unique sensitiveness, which, when
developed, become the loveliest, the fr;u
grantest, as well as the tenderest of flow
ers —the pure religion of a civilized man.
Inquisitiveness is not. always a pleasant
trait; the celestial’s tum-tum would be
jarring even to an enthusiastic Wagner
ite. Even so are some very real phases
of religion to a more highly cultured na
ture. But who will judge the tree by the
green and crabbed berry, father than by
green and crabbed berry, rather than by
Feldman in Hebrew Union College
Annual.
umber 46
*YQ