The Maccabaean

“THE Selected Essays of Achad Ha’am” published this year by the Jewish Publication Society of America is a clear and vivid expression of what is known as the Zionist Movement or the great Hebrew Revival. That the Jews have been a true historical force none but the most ignorant will deny. A proof of the ascendancy of the Hebrew spirit may be found in the almost universal acceptance of the Bible. From the earliest times until the latest the world's greatest litterateurs have found in the Bible the profoundest expression of their highest thoughts. The works of St. Augustine, Voltaire, Hugo, Goethe, and Byron literally breathe the Hebraic spirit. From the time of the dispersion throughout the entire period of the Diaspora the Jews have stamped civilization with their unconquerable spirit of progress and reform. It was St. Paul, a Jew, who really made Christianity; when the advent of machinery threatened to crush labor, Karl Marx, a Jew, came to the rescue of the world; and even now, when an over- abundance of mechanistic materialism threatens the spirit of pure philosophical speculation with deluge, it is Bergson, a Jew again, who has come to the rescue.

To some a good deal of tlıis book may appear to be wild speculation. Imagine ‚one of our so-called radicals whose mind is stale with phrases such as “the equality of each and all” reading “The Transvaluation of Values,” which is one of the most noteworthy essays in the book! To his understanding the adaptation of the Nietz- chean system to Zionism and the idea of the Jews as a supernation may seem monstrous. Yet to the reasoning faculties of normal beings it ‘must appear plausible enough, The Nietzchean system tends to develop the specific type to the highest of which it is capable. Naturally the Superman of Nietzche is “the blond beast.” But we must bear in mind, says Achad Ha’am, that in his selection of the blond beast we are not dealing with Nietzche the philosopher, but with Nietzche the Aryan.

Obviously the conception of a Superman must not follow by logical necessity from his fundamental postulate. “We are therefore at liberty to suppose that this same Nietzche if his taste had been Hebraic might still have changed the moral standard and made the Superman ‘an end in himself, but would in that case have attributed to him quite different characteristics, the expansion of moral power, the subjugation of the bestial instincts, the striving after truth and righteousness in thought and deed, the eternal warfare against falsehood and wickednness, in a word, that moral idea which Judaism has impressed on us.”

The book contains seventeen essays of a variety of subjects and ideas which make it large in its scope, The first two essays, the first entitled “Profane and Sacred,” the second “Justice and Mercy,” are very brief but impressive, the latter being a fine defence of the Hebrew conception of justice, which has often been misconstrued through a confusion of the real meanings of justice and mercy. The third essay, “Positive and Negative,” displays the author’s keen insight into the different phases of social development, While the main object of the essay is to explain these two fordes, positive and negative, in the development of the Jewish idea, it sheds a fine light on other phases of social development more general in their character.

“Anticipations and Survivals,” much like the preceding essay, deals with two creative forces in society and their uses, anticipations, or ideas ahead of their times, and survivals, ideas which, though present, no longer exercise any actual power, society in its spiritual development having passed beyond the conditions which have called them forth. As an example of an anticipation the author gives the idea of the Unity of God among the Jews in the period of Judges and Kings, until the Babylonian exile.

Spiritualists such as Horatio Dresser are wont to start a book of human philo-