470
PARTISAN REVIEW
Wilson's reference to a specific Jewish psychology is so con·
stant and so obscure that it should be examined more closely. The
Jewish ancestry operates in two ways. In the first place, the Jews
as an oppressed people are likely to sympathize with other op·
pressed groups and to take the leadership in movements foreman·
cipation in various fields. But this familiar truth is then inflated
in the manner already described: the consciousness of individual
oppression is called on to account for the content of the ideas of
Marx, Freud, Proust and Einstein, as well as their striving for
intellectual excellence and leadership. In the second place, the
tradition of the Bible and especially of the prophets gives to later
Jewish thinkers a primary "moral insight and world vision," and
it is by this tradition that Wilson accounts for the "moral genius"
of Marx and the fervor of Trotsky. "Marx," he says, had "inherited
from his rabbinical forebears a tradition of spiritual authority";
his "pride and independence, the conviction of moral superiority,"
came from ancient Judaism. Yet neither Marx nor Trotsky issued
from the ghetto or the synagogue, and both felt a complete estrange·
ment from the Jewish community. When Marx spoke of the Jews,
it was in a language which will please only anti-Semites. Such
personalities and. careers are hardly typical of gifted orthodox
Jews. Wilson must therefore assume action at a distance, or sup·
pose that this inherent Jewish moralism was transmitted through
the germ-plasm, like the French qualities of Engels' prose style.
However, when we ask what is this "moral insight and world
vision," we find that Wilson is nowhere more vague. The ideas of
a universal morality and of basic human rights that he attributes
to Marx are more plausibly derived from the French revolution
and German philosophy than from the prophets. Wilson points to
Marx's recognition of the self-interest and avarice of capitalists as
"psychologically profound"; but this is a commonplace of the
nineteenth century, which Marx himself documents with citations
from older literature. The most interesting of Marx's moral obser–
vations, in his early writings, are overlooked; but these are not
especially Jewish or original, for they owe a great deal to the
Hegelian concept of alienation.
It should be said that Wilson's portraiture is far better than
his theories. He manages to model all these characterizations with
an
ab~dance
of firm, revealing details, and what we see finally,
