Menasha had good water power and among its manufactures are paper and sulphite pulp, lumber, wooden-ware and cooperage products, woollen and knit goods, leather, boats and bricks. The first white man to visit the site of Menasha was probably Jean Nicolet, who seems to have come in the winter of 1634–1635 and to have found here villages of Fox and Winnebago Indians. Subsequently there were French and English trading posts here. The city was settled permanently in 1848, and was chartered in 1874.
MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL (c. 1604–1657), Jewish leader, was
born in Lisbon about 1604, and was brought up in Amsterdam.
His family had suffered under the Inquisition, but found an
asylum first in La Rochelle and later in Holland. Here Menasseh
rose to eminence not only as a rabbi and an author, but also as a
printer. He established the first Hebrew press in Holland.
One of his earliest works El Conciliador won immediate reputation.
It was an attempt at reconciliation between apparent
discrepancies in various parts of the Old Testament. Among
his correspondents were Vossius, Grotius and Huet. In 1638
he decided to settle in Brazil, as he still found it difficult to provide
in Amsterdam for his wife and family, but this step was
rendered unnecessary by his appointment to direct a college
founded by the Pereiras.
In 1644 Menasseh met Antonio de Montesinos, who persuaded him that the North-American Indians were the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. This supposed, discovery gave a new impulse to Menasseh’s Messianic hopes. But he was convinced that the Messianic age needed as its certain precursor the settlement of Jews in all parts of the known world. Filled with this idea, he turned his attention to England, whence the Jews had been expelled since 1290. He found much Christian support in England. During the Commonwealth the question of the readmission of the Jews was often mooted under the growing desire for religious liberty. Besides. this, Messianic and other mystic hopes were current in England. In 1650 appeared an English version of the Hope of Israel, a tract which deeply impressed public opinion. Cromwell had been moved to sympathy with the Jewish cause partly by his tolerant leanings, but chiefly because he foresaw the importance for English commerce of the presence of the Jewish merchant princes, some of whom had already found their way to London. At this juncture Jews received full rights in the colony of Surinam, which had been English since 1650. In 1655 Menasseh arrived in London. It was during his absence that the Amsterdam Rabbis excommunicated Spinoza, a catastrophe which would probably have been avoided had Menasseh—Spinoza’s teacher—been on the spot. One of his first acts on reaching London was the issue of his Humble Addresses to the Lord Protector, but its effect was weakened by the issue of Prynne’s able but unfair Short Demurrer. Cromwell summoned the Whitehall Conference in December of the same year. To this conference were summoned some of the most notable statesmen, lawyers and theologians of the day. The chief practical result was the declaration of Judges Glynne and Steele that “there was no law which forbade the Jews’ return to England.” Though, therefore, nothing was done to regularize the position of the Jews, the door was opened to their gradual return. Hence John Evelyn was able to enter in his Diary under the date Dec. 14, 1655, “Now were the Jews admitted.” But the attack on the Jews by Prynne and others could not go unanswered. Menasseh replied in the finest of his works, Vindiciae judaeorum (1656). “The best tribute to its value is afforded by the fact that it has since been frequently reprinted in all parts of Europe when the calumnies it denounced have been revived” (L. Wolf). Among those who used in this way Menasseh’s Vindiciae was Moses Mendelssohn (q.v.). Soon after Menasseh left London Cromwell granted him a pension, but he died before he could enjoy it. Death overtook him at Middleburg, as he was conveying the body of his son Samuel home for burial.
Menasseh ben Israel was the author of, many works, but his English tracts remain the only ones of importance. His De termino vitae was translated into English by Pococke, and his Conciliator by G. H. Lindo. Among his other works were a ritual compendium Tesoro dos dinim, and a treatise in Hebrew on immortality (Nishmath ḥayim). He was a friend of Rembrandt, who painted his portrait and engraved four etchings to illustrate his Piedra gloriosa. These are preserved in the British Museum.
See Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. v. ch. ii.; Lucien Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell, with a reprint of the English pamphlets (London, 1901); H. Adler, “A Homage to Menasseh ben Israel,” in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, i. 25–54. (I. A.)
MENCIUS, the latinized form of Măng-tsze, “Mr Măng,” or “Măng the philosopher,” a Chinese moral teacher whose name
stands second only to that of Confucius. His statue or spirit-tablet
(as the case may be) has occupied, in the temples of the
sage, since our 11th century, a place among “the four assessors,”
and since A.D. 1530 his title has been “the philosopher Măng,
sage of the second degree.”,
The Măngs or Măng-suns had been in the time of Confucius one of the three great clans of Lû (all descended from the marquis Hwan, 711–694 B.C.), which he had endeavoured to curb. Their power had subsequently been broken, and the branch to which Mencius belonged had settled in Tsâu, a small adjacent principality, the name of which remains in Tsâu hsien, a district of Yenchâu Shan-tung. A magnificent temple to Mencius is the chief attraction of the district city. The large marble statue of Mencius in the courtyard shows much artistic skill, and gives the impression of a man strong in body and mind, thoughtful and fearless. His lineal representative lives in the city, and thousands of Măngs are to be found in the neighbourhood.
Mencius, who died in the year 289 B.C., had lived to a great age—some say to his eighty-fourth year, placing his birth in 372 B.C., and others to his ninety-seventh, placing it in 385. All that we are told of his father is that he died in the third year of the child, who was thus left to the care of his mother. Her virtues and dealings with her son were celebrated by a great writer in the 1st century before our era, and for two thousand years she has been the model mother of China. Mencius is more than forty years old when he comes before us as a public character. He must have spent much time in study, investigating questions as to the fundamental principles of morals and society, and brooding over the condition of the country. The history, the poetry, the institutions and the great men of the past had received his attention. He intimates that he had been in communication with men who had been disciples of Confucius. That sage had become to him the chief of mortal men, the object of his untiring admiration; and in the doctrines which he had taught Mencius recognized the truth for want of an appreciation of which the bonds of order all round him were being relaxed, and the kingdom hastening to anarchy.
When he first comes forth from Tsâu, he is accompanied by several eminent disciples. He had probably imitated Confucius in becoming the master of a school, and encouraging the resort to it of inquiring minds that he might resolve their doubts and unfold to them the right methods of government. One of his sayings is that it would be a greater delight to the superior man to get the youth of brightest promise around him and to teach and train them than to enjoy the revenues of the kingdom. His intercourse with his followers was not so intimate as that of Confucius had been with the members of his selected circle; and, while he maintained his dignity among them, he was not able to secure from them the same homage and reverent admiration.
More than a century had elapsed since the death of Confucius, and during that period the feudal kingdom of Châu had been showing more and more of the signs of dissolution, and portentous errors that threatened to upset all social order were widely disseminated. The sentiment of loyalty to the dynasty had disappeared. Several of the marquesses and other feudal princes of earlier times had usurped the title of king. The smaller fiefs had been absorbed by the larger ones, or reduced to helpless dependence on them. Tsin, after greatly extending its territory,
