Up till the present time, the life and literature of Europe in general has twice passed beneath Hebraic influences, twice beneath Hellenic. Each influence has been greater or less, more or less durable, in different regions; nevertheless there are two clearly distinguishable invasions of the influences in each case. The intellectual influence of Greece was first felt in pagan times, when Greek ideas and Greek philosophy passed westward to Rome and through Rome permeated the peoples under Roman sway. The spiritual influence of Hebraism was first felt when, soon after this, the Christian Jews carried the doctrine of one God amongst the pagans, and when Christianity,—which, however otherwise diverse from Judaism, is none the less its outcome—became the religion of all the European stocks. The first influence which came from Greece was an intellectual influence, the passing of a fresh and stimulating breeze. The first influence of Jerusalem was a moral re-awakening and revelation, the shaking of a rushing mighty wind. The moral principle of Hebraism, in the special guise of Christianity, transformed the whole life and conduct and ideals of European men. What had been virtues in some cases became vices, what had been weaknesses became virtues.
We need not dwell upon this immense change; its nature is known to all, and its source was Jewish. Centuries pass by. The Christianised world has sunk its intelligence beneath the prescriptions of a demoralized Church; the moral impulse of the religion borrowed from the Hebrews has died down into formalism. I speak of the period immediately preceding the later Renaissance and the Reformation. Strange to say, it was in a large measure the Ottoman Turk who came to the rescue. He over-ran Greece, captured Constantinople, and was the cause of a great westward exodus of Greek talent and learning. Italy in particular was filled with Greeks whose profit and pride it was to spread far and wide the literature and culture of their nation. The avidity with which this new learning was received was marvellous; still more marvellous was the effect. It was, in truth, a renaissance, a new birth of intellect. It meant no less than a general revival of the spirit of inquiry, of open-eyed observation, of a desire and a resolve to see things as they were, and not as tradition and dogma had taught men to see them. Italy, France, Germany and England became alive with fresh efforts of the reason, inspired with fresh ideas of taste and beauty in artistic creation, and with new hopes and schemes of progress. The astonishing abundance, the immense variety, and the splendid quality of the Elizabethan literature are due to no other recognisable cause. It was one and the same cause that made Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and Bacon possible. A new springtime seemed to have dawned upon the world of thought. This was the second period of Hellenic influence, an influence wholly intellectual and artistic.
Following the re-awakening of speculation came the Reformation. The Reformation brought the reading of the Bible at first hand, and a new style of preaching and exhorting directly from it. In religion and morals the reformers fell back upon the Scriptures themselves. They drank in the Scriptures, and therewith the Hebraic spirit which pervades them. In most cases the salutary effect upon character and conduct can hardly be overstated. In other cases there was extravagance and harm. Uncompromisingly, and not very intelligently, did they speak Scripture, think Scripture, and act Scripture, like Hebrews born out of due season. Knox invested himself with the austere authority of the Hebrew prophet; Calvin was fain to hew Agag in pieces before the Lord. The Puritans of England became fanatical in their sombre conception of sin and in the rigour of their exaggerated Hebraism. Here was the second period of Hebraic influence, an influence wholly moral and religious.
In each case the new invasion of the Hellenic spirit precedes, and is the handmaid of, the Hebraic. In each case the influence of Greece is to procure the open mind, that of Jerusalem, to mould the unsteady heart. The Greek works first upon the intellect to make it supple, the Hebrew comes after and gives robustness to the moral will. Such, in the main, is the distinction and the historic sequence of the two forces. We have twice passed under each, and we shall, I believe and hope, feel the strong power of each again, for we sorely need, on the one hand, something to give stamina to our weak moral conceptions, and, on the other, something to give us clear principles of social life, art, and culture.
Let us look a little closer at what our distinction implies.
Physically the unlikeness of Hebrew to Greek was very marked. Allowing for climatic effects, the Hebrew physiognomy has preserved itself until to-day. The true, or at least the ideal, Greek type is almost lost in hybrid forms, yet we know what it was. The ideal Hellene was tall, upright, strong and supple withal, his lightish hair and beard were thick and curling, his features straight and firm, his brow broad, his eyes full and light. The whole form and aspect expressed a healthy zest of life, an open-eyed contemplation of men and things, and a belief in the sovereign virtue of reason. The outward aspect of the Hebrew type is very different from this. The inward difference of the two races was no less great. The essential contrast between them is not one of brow and eye, it is one of thinking and seeing, a contrast between two sets of ideals and principles, two ways of looking at life and the world. Romans like Juvenal, who saw both Greeks and Jews numerous in the imperial city, could only superficially observe that the Jew was unsocial, narrow in his prejudices and obstinate in his superstitions, while the Greek was as devoid of principle as he was brilliantly versatile. The Jew and Greek whom he saw were those of a demoralised period; but in any case the Roman did not understand either; he did not know that each was the representative of a certain important set of principles carried to excess. He would hardly have thought it worth his while to reflect on such a matter. It is otherwise with us, to whom all great human phenomena are of significance for that sound thinking which is essential to progress.
How can we describe in brief and intelligible terms these two spirits, the Hebraic and the Hellenic? One might use many figures of speech. Matthew Arnold's antithesis of Hellenic thinking to Hebraic doing needs much qualification. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the Hebraic spirit is heat, the Hellenic spirit is light. Hebraism means moral fervour; Hellenism means intellectual sensibility. Hebraism suggests strength of conviction, tenacity of resolve, prophetic vehemence; Hellenism suggests flexibility of thought, adaptability to circumstances, artistic serenity. Hebraism suggests the austere and spiritual life, Hellenism the social and sensuous life. Yet none of these brief antitheses can be wholly or exclusively true. The difference is not thus to be labelled away, any more than one can label the difference between scents of flowers or tones of voices. There are two experiences which are apt to change the whole complexion of things; the one is religious conversion, the other falling in love. Yet how could one sum up the transformation except by those terms "converted" and "in love"? So, when the Hebrew, morally introspective, reliant on some great power outside himself, fervid in his beliefs as in his passions, intense in his imaginations and enthusiasms, is compared with the Hellene, a being intellectually open and curious, artistically sensitive, a cultivator of humanity and its delights, many-sided and self-possessed, by what condensed terms shall one describe their diverse ways of taking the whole of life and its concerns? In default of such terms let us hear a modern descendant of Israel, one who was at the time half thinking of this very distinction. Heinrich Heine, though an apostate from Judaism, and though he liked to fancy himself a Hellene, was nevertheless by constitution a Hebrew. He describes a visit which he paid to Goethe, than whom in form and mind and principle no more perfect Hellene ever lived in Hellas itself. When Heine came face to face with Goethe at Weimar, he tells us that he felt as if Goethe must be Jupiter, and that he involuntarily glanced aside to see whether the eagle was not there with the thunderbolt in his beak. He almost addressed him in Greek, but, finding he "understood German," he made the profound remark that the plums on the road were delicious. And now, hear how Heine draws the contrast between the Hellenic Teuton and himself, the Teutonic Hebrew: "At bottom Goethe and I are opposite natures and mutually repellent. He is essentially a man on whom life sits easily, who looks on enjoyment of life as the highest good, and though at times he has glimpses and vague feelings of the ideal life and expresses them in his poems, yet he has never comprehended it, much less lived it. I, on the contrary, am essentially an enthusiast, that is, so inspired by the ideal as to be ready to offer myself up to it, and even prompted to let myself be absorbed by it. But, as a fact, I have caught at the enjoyments of life, and found pleasure in them; hence the fierce struggle that goes on in me between my clear reason, which approves the enjoyments of life, and rejects the devotion of self-sacrifice as a folly, and my enthusiasm, which is always rising up and laying violent hands on me, and trying to drag me down again to her ancient solitary realm. Up, I ought perhaps to say, for it is still a grave question whether the enthusiast who gives up his life for the idea does not in a single moment live more and feel more than Herr von Goethe in his sixth-and-seventieth year of egotistic tranquillity." Heine was not a typical Hebrew, and hence the struggle of which he speaks; but his words express what we want to have expressed. The true Hellene lives for the sake of life, and for whatsoever things are lovely and charming. The true Hebrew lives for the sake of his idea, and for whatsoever things are of spiritual power.
The consequence is that, while the imagination, the rapture, and the pathos of the Hebrew rose to heights and descended to depths utterly beyond the consciousness of the ordinary Hellene, the Hellenes, on the contrary, attained to a justness of intellectual and artistic perception which formed no part of the ordinary Hebrew culture. The general manner of all the Hebrew prophets, of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, or Joel, is the same—the manner of the fiercest afflatus, of entire abandonment, finding expression in phrases of magnificent solemnity and in imagery of the profoundest awesomeness. This manner the Greeks never show. Not even Æschylus, the most Hebraic of Hellenes, has any passages in which he loses control of his artistic sense. Neither he nor any other Hellene sees ecstatic visions or dreams ecstatic dreams. There is no place in the Greek comprehension for that state of mind which can beget visions like these: "And I looked, and behold! A whirlwind came out of the north, a gray cloud and a fire enfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire"—with the further visions of living creatures "like burning coals of fire," and the "wheels within wheels," with the rings of them full of eyes. To this there is not and could not be any parallel in the Greek. When the Persian queen in Æschylus dreams the most startling dream of her life, it is obviously a vision constructed by the poet's intellect alone. When Plato sees visions, they, too, are intellectual constructions with the meaning as clear as the words. There is nothing rapt, nothing fantastic. Greek imagery in this region is to Hebrew imagery what the sculpture of Greece is to those weird creations of symbolism at Nineveh and Babylon, the colossal human-faced bulls and the genii with the eagle-head. And if you remind me that I am comparing prophet with poet, and not prophet with prophet, I answer that the poets are the only analogue of the prophets that Greece possessed; and that very fact illustrates what is meant when we say that the Hellenic spirit had no capacity for, the Hellenic view of life no impulse to, that intensity of feeling which could produce imagery so stupendous in such awe-inspiring phrase.
The Hebraic character, therefore, is one of strength and depth. Even now no Jew in fiction is ever a weakling or a trifler. In whatever light he is presented, a Shylock of Shakespeare, an Isaac of Scott, a Nathan of Lessing, a Sidonia of Disraeli—revengeful, avaricious, bigoted, benevolent, magnificent, talented—he is always a character of striking power and intensity. The ancient type of Greek does not appear in modern fiction. If he did, it would be as a subtle reasoner, perfect critic, polished man of the world, full of the intellectual and social graces, ever adaptable to circumstance, choosing his idea and never letting the idea govern him. And, in the matter of loves and hates, it was rather his maxim that one should neither hate nor love over-much, since he might some day come to hate the person he loved and love the person he hated. The Hellenic watchwords "nothing too much"; and "measure in everything"; the Hellenic hatred of "unseasonableness" and dread of "infatuation"—these things show how the ideal of the Greek was ever to be master of himself by aid of reason. The Hebraic spirit, on the contrary, would strive and cry without scruple of measure or season in any matter on which its conscience or desire was fixed.
The Hebraic spirit is uncompromising; it does not readily admit other points of view. Hebrew history, for example, is wholly one-sided, seen wholly in the colour of a Hebrew's feelings. The peoples with whom Israel comes in contact are either so many impious men made to be slain, or they are wicked tyrants, allowed by Heaven to chastise the chosen for some allotted period. This was the necessary outcome of the theocratic principle. How different from history as written by the Greek Thucydides! To that historian facts are so many facts, to be seen as they are, and to be told without undue enthusiasm, without obtrusive expression of moral approval or disapproval. Never since those Hellenic days has a historian been able so perfectly to contemplate the triumphs and disasters of his own country as if himself quite aloof from personal interest or stake in the result. Unclouded vision, purely intellectual observation, could no further go.