Russia is—underground.

"Away with your petty neutral little State, I say to the Zionist; the State to be bought on the instalment plan from the Sultan, to be built on the soil of superstition, where the Jews will go back to their traditional customs and fall asleep. The land is barren and sterile, and I do not believe in starvation, even on holy land. Even the orthodox must have a religion; but they will never acquire it in Palestine. They will cling to the old. They will not progress. The Bible—and I bow my head in reverence for that great work of fiction—will never be edited and revised as it ought to be, in Palestine. Judaism will not grow in Palestine. The Jews will cling to the letter, and the spirit of it will starve. God save the Jews from Palestine. Judaism there will not grow; it will stagnate and die. The Jews must live among the destroying forces of civilization. It is only when they outgrow their obnoxious superstitions and down-dragging traditions that they become great."

The speaker waxed warm; his eyes flashed with enthusiasm, his voice grew loud.

"I want none of the Jewish State," he said. "The whole world is holy land. Wherever there are good, honest people is holy land, and from every corner of the earth shall issue the law, and the word of God shall go forth from every place, including my garret. Give us a big stage, give us the world, give us the universe, and let me watch it from its centre—my garret at 3 Birmingham Alley; let me watch the great and glorious play with Israel's heroic part in all the activities and growth and progress of the world, and I will 'thank whatever gods there be.' And this is my larger dream; a better, more humane world, created by the brotherhood of men, with Israel as peacemaker and fraternizer. Amen."

IV Art for Tolstoy's Sake

It was at one of a series of lectures given under the auspices of the Social Science Circle during the winter season. The audience which assembled in the gloomy little hall on the third floor of an East Broadway building was rather small in size. In announcing the lecture no rewards had been offered to those who would come to listen to it, as often seemed necessary; the speaker of the evening was only a member of the club, who worked for his ideas, and not an eminent lecturer who lived on his reputation and whose name would "draw a crowd."

The majority of young men and women of the Ghetto would not think of wasting an evening on wisdom; they would commit no such folly, when they could have "such a lovely time" at the near-by dancing schools. Still, the few and the faithful were all present, and those who were thirsting for knowledge came to be saturated. Max Lubinsky was the speaker, and his theme, "Tolstoy's Theory of Art," was teeming with vital import.

Keidansky, as a member of the committee in charge of the literary work of the circle, acted as chairman of the meeting. In introducing the speaker he made a few remarks, somewhat as follows:

"Tolstoy has theories of art. Personally I am rather sorry for this, because if he did not have them he would be a greater artist. Even as theories of life often mar existence, so theories of art impair the artist. Admitting that art with a purpose can help the world, it is certain that art for its own sweet sake can create and re-create worlds. After he had contributed some of the greatest works of art to the literature of Russia, Tolstoy decided to find out just what art was. During his investigations, which lasted many years, he found that the art of the world was in great part lazy, unemployed, corrupt, suffering from ennui, and ministering to the debauched, poor rich people, whom the poor man ever envies; he decided that art should become useful and go to work, and he gave it an employment—the promulgation of his ideas of social regeneration.

"Once, Tolstoy tells us, art was primitive and simple and pious, and it was good art and true; but during the Middle Ages, when the upper class and the nobility became sceptical and pessimistic, and could find no more consolation in religion, art became divorced from the church, because they took it up as an amusement and study. And ever since art got into such bad company—among people of culture and those who understand it, who cherished all its wonderful enfoldments and caressed all its capricious moods—ever since art got into such bad company, it became as beautiful as sin, and so complex, mystic and ambiguous that even the Russian muzhik or peasant cannot understand it. And so—as it seems to me—argues Tolstoy, the fact that the muzhik cannot appreciate 'Tannhäuser' proves conclusively that Wagner never wrote any real music. Then, the dear old master delves deeply into all definitions, origins and explanations of art. He finds no designation, no description that satisfies him; they all hinge on and culminate in beauty—in the production and reproduction of beauty that is in life, in nature, in the worlds within us and without; and Tolstoy is rather shy at mere beauty, and thinks it a temptress, a siren and a song; besides, beauty, he says, changes and depends on taste, and taste varies, and as all these definitions are too far-fetched and vague, he finds one that is still more indefinite. Art is the communication of feeling, the expression of the religious consciousness. Of course it is that, but first and foremost it must have the sterling qualities of art in form and matter.

"Tolstoy, however, would make this the chief basis and standard of art, for his would be an art that would detract men's minds from mere beauty, that would make them helplessly pious, that would unite mankind, make life as monotonous as possible, and convert humanity to Christian Anarchism.

"Every book, picture, statue and composition of music should be degradingly moral. And the question arises, what does he mean by religious consciousness? Walt Whitman expressed his religious consciousness in a manner that shocked the world, and it is not at all pleasing to Tolstoy, and yet Whitman was the most religious man that lived in centuries. The Abbé Prevost wrote "Manon Lescaut" to express his religious consciousness, and Robert Ingersoll delivered his lectures to do the same; to express their religious consciousness, great sculptors mould nude figures of women, out of worship of the divine beauty of the human form; and St. Francis of Assisi expresses the spiritual emotion in quite a different manner. But no, Tolstoy has a certain kind of religious consciousness in mind, and this should be expressed by all art and all artists in a uniform mode until we have gone back to primitive conditions.

"I yield to no one in my admiration of the grand old man of Russia. He is one of the noblest souls that ever walked this earth, and as an artist, when he is at his best and does not preach, he is superb; there are few like him. But when he begins to philosophize and moralize, few can rise to the height of absurdity as quickly as he can. As it seems to me, Tolstoy's position is something like this:

"'Christianity is a colossal failure,' he says, 'so let us all become Christians. Our civilization is dreadfully slow in its advance; it has not as yet outgrown its barbaric primitiveness, so let us all go back to barbarism. All government is evil, so let us be governed solely by the teachings of a man who lived nearly two thousand years ago, a man who was pure and who made no study of the wicked conditions of our time. It is only thus that we can become free—by a circumlocutory process of self-abnegation, self-sacrifice and self-annihilation. Let us become slaves of the