Note (return) — Chapter II

With all this he remained an ardent lover of the Talmud to the last. In fact, his philosophy is distinctively Jewish. Like Spinoza, he exhibited the effects of the Cabbala and of rabbinic speculation, with which he had been familiar from childhood. The honor of the Talmudic sages was always dear to him, and he never mentioned them without expressing profound respect. Persecuted though he was by his German coreligionists, he never bore them a grudge. As a man he loved them as brothers, but as a philosopher he could not subscribe to their views implicitly. But for friends and benefactors his affection was unusually strong. With what love he talks of Mendelssohn in the chapter dedicated to him in his autobiography, even though "he could not explain the persistency of Mendelssohn and the Wolffians generally in adhering to their system, except as a political dodge, and a piece of hypocrisy, by which they studiously endeavored to descend to the mode of thinking common to the popular mind!" His devotion to his wife was not diminished even after he had been compelled to divorce her because of his supposed heretical proclivities. "When the subject [of his divorce] came up in conversation, it was easy," says his biographer,26 "to read in his face the deep sorrow he felt: his liveliness then faded away sensibly. By and by he would become perfectly silent, was incapable of further entertainment, and went home earlier than usual." Of his Russo-Polish brethren he speaks in the highest terms. He cannot bestow too much praise on their care for the poor and the sick, and he always hoped once more to see his native land, to whose king he dedicated his Transcendental Philosophy. "For," says he, "the Polish Jews are, indeed, for the most part not enlightened by science; their manners and way of life are still rude, but they are loyal to the religion of their fathers and to the laws of their country."27