 back to the history of efforts which have made great changes, it
is astonishing how many of them seemed hopeless to those who looked on in the
beginning. Take what we have all heard and seen something of - the effort after
the unity of Italy, which we are sure soon to see accomplished to the very last
boundary. Look into Mazzini's account of his first yearning, when he was a boy,
after a restored greatness and a new freedom to Italy, and of his first efforts
as a young man to rouse the same feelings in other young men, and get them to
work towards a united nationality. Almost everything seemed against him; his
countrymen were ignorant or indifferent, governments hostile, Europe
incredulous. Of course the scorners often seemed wise. Yet you see the prophecy
lay with him. As long as there is a remnant of national consciousness, I suppose
nobody will deny that there may be a new stirring of memories and hopes which
may inspire arduous action.«
    »Amen,« said Mordecai, to whom Deronda's words were a cordial. »What is
needed is the leaven - what is needed is the seed of fire. The heritage of
Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in their veins as a power
without understanding, like the morning exultation of herds; it is the inborn
half of memory, moving as in a dream among writings on the walls, which it sees
dimly but cannot divide into speech. Let the torch of visible community be lit!
Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let there
be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a nationality whose
members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, even as the sons of England
and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, but who still have a national hearth
and a tribunal of national opinion. Will any say It cannot be? Baruch Spinoza
had not a faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect
at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's nakedness and
said, They who scorn him have the higher wisdom. Yet Baruch Spinoza confessed,
he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen nation. Who says that the
history and literature of our race are dead? Are they not as living as the
history and literature of Greece and Rome, which have inspired revolutions,
enkindled the thought of Europe, and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These
were an inheritance dug from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never
ceased to quiver in millions of human
