[THE THREE RINGS: A FABLE]
From Lessing’s “Nathan der Weise”[6]
[Since Plato, no writer has understood better than Lessing the dramatic conduct of a philosophic dialogue. The following colloquy is a beautiful example of his art and of his thought.
Nathan is a Jew, famed for his wealth and for his wisdom, living in Jerusalem at the time of the Third Crusade. In the following scene he has just been summoned to the presence of the Sultan Saladin. He supposes that a loan of money is the Sultan’s object. Instead of this, he finds that it is his reputed wisdom which has gained him the interview. Nathan is a man who cannot have taken his beliefs in spiritual things without examination; here, then, says Saladin, are three faiths contending for mastery, the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mahommedan. Each claims to be the true and only true religion. The claim cannot be true of more than one of them. Which of them, in his inmost soul, does Nathan hold to be justified? That he may have time to collect his thoughts, Saladin leaves the Jew alone for a while before he answers. Nathan, who does not yet know Saladin, is at first very doubtful of the bona fides of the Musalman prince in making this inquiry of him.]
[ACT III, Scene 6]
Nathan (alone)
H’m, h’m. A strange request. Where do I stand?
What will the Sultan with me ... what? I come
Prepared for money, and he asks for ... Truth!
And this he needs must have as bare and bright
As if the truth were coin!... Aye, were it coin,
Old, well-worn coin, that men tell out by weight,
Such might I find him! But new-minted coin—
The stamp’s enough: you fling it on the board
And there’s an end—not thus can Truth be told!
Doth he conceive that truth is to be poured
From head to head like gold into a bag?
Who’s here the Jew, I or the Sultan?... Yet
Suppose in very truth he asks for Truth?
How then? And verily it were too little,
Too paltry a suspicion, to believe
He used the truth but as a snare.... Too little!
Ah, what is then too little for the great?
Why should he break into my house? A friend
Would surely knock and listen at the door
Before he entered. I must tread with care.
But how? but how? To play the stolid Jew,
That ne’er will pass ... still less, no Jew at all;
For ’then’ he’ll say, ’why not a Musalman?’
Let me think.... Ha! I have it now. That saves me!
Not children only can one satisfy
With fables.... He is coming. Let him come!
Enter Saladin.
Saladin