Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/416

400 SPIAKESPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN. faith in that extra-mundane thunder-god whom Moses preached, become the fixed idea of a whole race, so that, though they have for two thousand years suffered from it in strait-jackets and shower- baths, yet for all that will not give it up like that lunatic lawyer whom I saw in San Carlo, who would not be persuaded but what the sun was an English cheese, the rays of which were long red maggots, and that one of these worm- rays was eating away his brain. I will here by no means deny the value of that fixed idea, but I will only say that those who Lave it are much too weak to manage it, and therefore being oppressed by it have become incurable. What tremendous martyrdom have they suffered from it! what greater martyrdoms await them in future ! I shudder at the thought, and an infinite pity ripples through my heart. During the whole Middle Ages, till to-day, the predominant view of all things was not in direct contradiction with that idea with which Moses burdened the Jews, lashed it into them with holy straps, and cut it deeply into their flesh in fact, they did not differ materially from Christians and Mahometans, nor by an antagonistic synthesis, but only by analysis and shibboleth. But if Satan, or the sinful pantheism from which may all the saints of the Old and New Testament as well aa the Koran protect us ! should conquer, there will