Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Invitation To Computer Science 7th Edition Ebook PDF
Invitation To Computer Science 7th Edition Ebook PDF
and asks him to lend the money as to an enemy. The Jew pretends
to forgive and forget; but he takes Antonio at his word, and playfully
demands a forfeit “for an equal pound of your fair flesh, to be cut off
and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.” The bond is
sealed, and it proves a fatal bond. Antonio’s ships are wrecked at
sea, and, when the term expires, he finds himself unable to pay the
Jew.
Shylock, like Barabas, has an only daughter, Jessica, whom he
cherishes and trusts above all human beings. All the love that he can
spare from his ducats is lavished upon this daughter. Fair as Abigail,
Jessica lacks the filial loyalty and sweet grace which render the
daughter of Barabas so charming a contrast to her father. Jessica is
“ashamed to be her father’s child.” She detests him, and to her her
own home “is hell.” Enamoured of a Christian youth, she enters into
a shameless intrigue with him to deceive and rob her father, and,
disguised as a boy, she runs away with her lover, carrying a quantity
of gold and jewels from the paternal hoard. The discovery of his
daughter’s desertion throws Shylock, as it did Barabas, into despair.
He never felt his nation’s curse until now.
While in this mood he hears of Antonio’s losses and rejoices
exceedingly thereat. The news of his enemy’s mishap acts as a
salve for his own domestic woes. His old grudge against the
Christian, embittered by his recent misfortune, steels him against
mercy. He recalls the indignities and injuries of which he had been
the recipient at Antonio’s hands, all because he was a Jew, and
vows to exact the full forfeit: to have the Christian’s flesh. Antonio is
taken to prison and implores Shylock for pity; but the latter grimly
answers: “I’ll have my bond. Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst
a cause; but since I am a dog, beware my fangs. I will have my
bond.”
The Venetian law was strict on the subject of commercial
transactions. The prosperity of the Republic depended on its
reputation for equity and impartiality, and not even the Doge could
interfere with the course of Justice. The trial commences. Antonio
appears in court, and Shylock demands justice. He is not to be
softened by prayers from the victim’s friends, or by entreaties from
the Duke. He will not even accept the money multiplied three times
over; but he insists on the due and forfeit of his bond. Thus matters
stand, when Portia, the betrothed of Antonio’s friend, appears on the
scene in the guise of a young and learned judge. She first
endeavours to bend the Jew’s heart; but on finding him inflexible,
she acknowledges that there is no power in Venice that can alter a
legally established claim: “The bond is forfeit, and lawfully by this the
Jew may claim a pound of flesh.”
Antonio is bidden to lay bare his breast, and Shylock is gleefully
preparing to execute his cruel intent; the scene has reached its
climax of dramatic intensity, when the tables are suddenly turned
upon the Jew. The young judge stays his hand with these awful
words:
RESETTLEMENT
About the middle of the eighteenth century a new spirit had arisen
on the Continent of Europe; or rather the spirit of the Renaissance,
suppressed in Italy, had re-asserted itself in Central Europe under a
more highly developed form. Seventeen hundred years had passed
since the heavenly choir sang on the plain of Bethlehem the glorious
anthem, “Peace on earth, good-will toward men.” And the message
which had been blotted out in blood, while the myth and the words
were worshipped, was once more heard in a totally different version.
Those who delivered it were not angels, but men of the world; the
audience not a group of rude Asiatic shepherds, but the most
polished of European publics; and the tongue in which it was
delivered not the simple Aramaic of Palestine, but the complex
vehicle of modern science. Once more man, by an entirely new
route, had arrived at the one great truth, the only true
commandment: “Love one another, O ye creatures of a day. Bear
with one another’s faults and follies. Life is too brief for hatred;
human blood too precious to be wasted in mutual destruction.”
It was the age of Voltaire, Diderot and Jean Jacques Rousseau
in France; of Lessing and Mendelssohn in Germany. The doctrine of
universal charity and happiness which, like its ancient prototype, was
later to be inculcated at the point of the sword and illustrated by
rape, murder, fire and famine, as yet found its chief expression in
poetical visions of freedom and in philosophical theories of equality
promulgated by sanguine Encyclopaedists. It was a period of lofty
aspirations not yet degraded by mediocre performance; and the
Jews, who had hitherto passively or actively shared in every stage of
Europe’s progress, were to participate in this development also.
Unlike the earlier awakenings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
this call for tolerance did not die away on the confines of
Christendom. The time had come for the question to be put: “Sind
Christ and Jude eher Christ und Jude als Mensch?” Israel was
destined to receive at the hands of Reason what Conscience had
proved unable to grant. And in this broader awakening both Teuton
and Latin were united. The French philosophers served the cause of
toleration by teaching that all religions are false; the German by
teaching that they are all true.
But, ere this triumph could be achieved, the Jews had to
overcome many and powerful enemies. Among these were the two
most famous men of the century.
1740–86 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia and ardent
friend of philosophy, appears anything but great or
philosophical in his policy towards the children of Israel. Under his
reign the prohibitive laws of the Middle Age were revived in a
manner which exceeded mediaeval legislation in thoroughness,
though it could not plead mediaeval barbarism as an excuse. Only a
limited number of Jews were permitted to reside in Frederick’s
dominions. By the “General Privilege” of 1750 they were divided into
two categories. In the first were included traders and officials of the
Synagogue. These had a hereditary right of residence restricted to
one child in each family. The right for a second child was purchased
by them for 70,000 thalers. The second division embraced persons
of independent means tolerated individually; but their right of abode
expired with them. The marriage regulations were so severe that
they condemned poor Jews to celibacy; while all Jews, rich and poor
alike, were debarred from liberal professions, and they all were
fleeced by taxes ruinous at once and ludicrous.
Voltaire, the arch-enemy of Feudalism, yet defended the feudal
attitude towards the Jews. His enmity for the race did not spring
entirely from capricious ill-humour. He had a grudge against the
Jews owing to some pecuniary losses sustained, as he complained,
through the bankruptcy of a Jewish capitalist of the name of Medina.
The story, as told by the inimitable story-teller himself, is worth
repeating: “Medina told me that he was not to blame for his
bankruptcy: that he was unfortunate, that he had never been a son
of Belial. He moved me, I embraced him, we praised God together,
and I lost my money. I have never hated the Jewish nation; I hate
136
nobody.”
1750–51 But this was not all. Whilst in Berlin, Voltaire waged
a protracted warfare against a Hebrew jeweller. It was
a contest between two great misers, each devoutly bent on over-
reaching the other. According to a good, if too emphatic, judge,
“nowhere, in the Annals of Jurisprudence, is there a more despicable
thing, or a deeper involved in lies and deliriums,” than this Voltaire-
137
Hirsch lawsuit. It arose out of a transaction of illegal stock-
jobbing. Voltaire had commissioned the Jew Hirsch to go to Dresden
and purchase a number of Saxon Exchequer bills—which were
payable in gold to genuine Prussian holders only—giving him for
payment a draft on Paris, due after some weeks, and receiving from
him a quantity of jewels in pledge, till the bills were delivered. Hirsch
went to Dresden, but sent no bills. Voltaire, suspecting foul play,
stopped payment of the Paris draft, and ordered Hirsch to come
back at once. On the Jew’s arrival an attempt at settlement was
made. Voltaire asked for his draft and offered to return the diamonds,
accompanied with a sum of money covering part of the Jew’s
travelling expenses. Hirsch on examining the diamonds declared that
some of them had been changed, and declined to accept them. It
was altogether a mauvaise affaire, and to this day it remains a
mystery which of the two litigants was more disingenuous.
The case ended in a sentence which forced Hirsch to restore the
Paris draft and Voltaire to buy the jewels at a price fixed by sworn
experts. Hirsch was at liberty to appeal, if he could prove that the
diamonds had been tampered with. In the meantime he was fined
ten thalers for falsely denying his signature. Voltaire shrieked
hysterically, trying to convince the world and himself that he had
triumphed. But the world, at all events, refused to be convinced. The
scandal formed the topic of conversation and comment throughout
the civilised world. Frederick’s own view of the case was that his
friend Voltaire had tried “to pick Jew pockets,” but, instead, had his
own pocket picked of some £150, and, moreover, he was made the
laughing-stock of Europe in pamphlets and lampoons innumerable—
one of these being a French comedy, Tantale en Procès, attributed
by some to Frederick himself; a poor production wherein the author
ridicules—to the best of his ability—the unfortunate philosopher. The
incident was not calculated to sweeten Voltaire’s temper, or to
enhance his affection for the Jewish people. Vain and vindictive, the
sage, with all his genius and his many amiable qualities, never forgot
an injury or forgave a defeat.
On the other hand, the Jews could boast not a few allies. Among
the champions of humanity, in the noblest sense of the term, none
was more earnest than Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the prince of
modern critics. His pure and lofty nature had met with her kindred in
Moses Mendelssohn, the Jewish philosopher, born within the same
twelvemonth. The friendship which bound these two
1728–9
children of diverse races and creeds together was a
practical proof of Lessing’s own doctrine that virtue is international,
and that intellectual affinity recognises no theological boundaries.
This doctrine, already preached in most eloquent
1779
prose, found an artistic embodiment, and a universal
audience, in Nathan der Weise—the first appearance of the Jew on
the European stage as a human being, and a human being of the
very highest order. The Wise Nathan was no other than Moses
Mendelssohn, scarcely less remarkable a person than Lessing
himself. Years before Mendelssohn had left his native town of
Dessau and trudged on to Berlin in search of a future. A friendless
and penniless lad, timid, deformed, and repulsively ugly, he was with
the utmost difficulty admitted into the Prussian capital, of which he
was to become an ornament. For long years after his arrival in
Berlin, the gifted and destitute youth laboured and waited with the
patient optimism of one conscious of his own powers, until an
unwilling world was forced to recognise the beauty and heroism of
the soul which lurked under that most unpromising exterior; and the
Jewish beggar lad, grown into an awkward, stuttering and
insignificant-looking man, gradually rose to be the idol of a salon—
the eighteenth century equivalent for a shrine—at which every
foreign visitor of distinction and culture, irrespective of religion or