Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/168

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164
Logic Taught by Love

members to be great Leaders in the sensuous Arts, because it gives to them a strong tendency to think of The Unseen Unity. The effect of this Tribe on the thought-life of the world is very like what was described in Chapter XIX. as the effect of the true Logos-teacher on a School; when Science has exhausted itself and wandered off into too much detail, some Jew like Mendelssohn or Spinoza, or some Gentile who has been saturating his soul in Jewish lore, like Gratry or Boole, prepares for true recuperative repose by striking afresh the key-note of Sabbath, the Name of The Invisible Unity. For reasons which were pointed out in Chapter XIX., he who does this seems to be out of the line of progress, because he ignores and neutralizes much which others have been doing and which seems essential. But when once we have realized that nothing is more essential to progress than strong pulsation we shall lose the feeling that the peculiarly Jewish type of mind is out of tune with true refinement; we shall turn to it for the repose which gives new energy to all forms of culture.

The function of Judaism is perhaps best understood when we remember that the early Christian asceticism was not an isolated phenomenon, but a typical specimen of a group of facts, the natural outcome of tendencies whose action is essential to our intellectual life, but whose uncontrolled action would destroy society. Of these tendencies, Judaism is the corrective and controller.

In order to avoid entering into disputed questions of theology, let us look at the action of these tendencies as exhibited on a small scale in our own day.

James Hinton wrote a charming little book called The Mystery of Pain, wherein he announced that failure