away at what we know not, and should we haply hit ourselves, we think another struck us. Who has not witnessed this once more in the present stir against the Jews, let us say, when looked at in light of that doctrine? What has given the Jews their now so dreaded power [P. 265] among and over us, not one man seems to stop and ponder … : nowhere can we trace as yet an inclination to a deeper search into ourselves, in this case to a thorough criticism of the will and spirit of all that conglomerate of nature and civilisation which we, for instance, call the ‘German.’
{FEUER} {SCHOP} Yet the movement here alluded to [the anti-Semitic Movement] perhaps is more adapted than any other to set us marvelling at ourselves: in it we seem to see the late rewakening of an instinct that appeared extinct. A man who some thirty years ago drew notice to the Jews’ inaptitude for taking a productive share in our Art, and felt impelled to renew that attempt just eighteen years thereafter [* Translator’s Footnote: “See Judaism in Music, Vol. III. of the present series.”], was met by the utmost indignation of Jews alike and Germans; it became quite dangerous to breathe the word ‘Jew’ with a doubtful accent. But what once roused the bitterest ill-will when spoken on the field of ethical Aesthetics, we suddenly hear cried in vulgar brutal tones upon the field of civic intercourse and party politics. That fact that lies between these two expressions is the bestowal of full right upon the Jews to regard themselves in all conceivable respects as Germans … .” [1063W-{1-2/81} Know Thyself – 2nd Supplement to ‘Religion and Art’: PW Vol. VI, p. 264-265]
[1064W-{1-2/81} Know Thyself – 2nd Supplement to ‘Religion and Art’: PW Vol. VI, p. 266]
[P. 266] {FEUER} {SCHOP} “The first thing … to strike us, will be the recent experience that our clerics feel lamed at once in their agitation against the Jews when Judaism itself is seized by the root, and the patriarchs for instance, great Abraham in particular, are submitted to a criticism involving the actual text of the Mosaic books. At once the groundwork of the Christian Church, its ‘positive’ religion, seems to reel beneath their feet; a ‘Mosaic Confession’ is recognised; and its adherents are accorded the right to take their place beside us, to examine the credentials of a second revelation through Jesus Christ – whom even in the opinion of the late English Prime Minister they regard as one of their countless minor prophets, of whom we have made by far too much ado. To tell the truth, it will fall hard to prove by the aspect of the Christian world, and the character of the Culture shed upon it by a Church so soon decayed, the superiority of the revelation through Jesus Christ to that through Abraham and Moses: {FEUER} in spite of its dispersion, the Jewish stock has remained one whole with the Mosaic laws to this very day, whereas our culture and civilisation stand in the most crying contradiction to Christ’s teaching.” [1064W-{1-2/81} Know Thyself – 2nd Supplement to ‘Religion and Art’: PW Vol. VI, p. 266]
[1065W-{1-2/81} Know Thyself – 2nd Supplement to ‘Religion and Art’: PW Vol. VI, p. 267]
[P. 267] “Now the astounding success of our resident Jews in the gaining and amassing of huge stores of money has always filled our Military State authorities with nothing but respect and joyful admiration: so that the present campaign against the Jews seems to point to a wish to draw the attention of those authorities to the question, Where do the Jews get it from? The bottom of the whole dispute, as it appears to us, is Property, Ownership, which we suddenly perceive to be in jeopardy, notwithstanding that each outlay of the State has the look of aiming more at the insurance of possession than anything else.
