166
PARTISAN REVIEW
certain idea of the Jew, of
his
nature, of his social role. And in
order to be able to decide that among 26 more fortunate contestants
it was the Jew who stole his place, he would apriori have to be the
kind of person who runs his life on the basis of emotional reasoning.
It becomes obvious that no external factor can induce antisemi–
tism in the antisemite. It is an attitude totally and freely self-chosen,
a global attitude which is adopted not only in regard to Jews but in
regard to men in general, to history and society ; it is a passion and
at the same time a concept of the world. No doubt certain character–
istics are more pronounced in such and such an antisemite than in
another. But they are always present together and they govern one
another. It is this syncretic totality which we must now try to describe.
I stated a few minutes ago that antisemitism presents itself as a
passion. Everyone has understood that it is a question of hate or
anger. But ordinarily hate and anger are provoked: I hate the person
who has made me suffer, the person who scorns or insults me. We
have just seen that the antisemitic passion is not of such a nature:
it precedes the facts which should arouse it, it seeks them out to feed
upon, it must even interpret them in its own way in order to render
them really offensive. And yet if you speak of the Jew to an antisemite,
he evinces signs of lively irritation.
If
we remember, moreover, that
we must
consent
to anger before it can manifest itself, and that we
grow
angry, to use the correct expression, we must admit that anti–
semitism has chosen to exist on the passionate level. It is not unusual
to choose an emotional way of life rather than a reasonable one. But
ordinarily one loves the
objects
of passion: women, glory, power,
money. Since the antisemite has chosen hatred, we are forced to con–
clude that it is the emotional state that he loves. Ordinarily
this
kind
of feeling is not pleasing: he who passionately desires a woman is
passionate because of the woman and in spite of passion: one distrusts
emotional reasoning which by every means aims at pointing out
opinions dictated by love or jealousy or hate; one mistrusts passionate
aberrations and that which has been termed monoideism. And this
is what the antisemite chooses first of all. But how can one choose
to reason falsely? Because one feels the nostalgia of impermeability.
The rational man seeks the truth gropingly, he knows that his reason–
ing is only probable, that other considerations will arise to make it
doubtful; he never knows too well where he's going, he is "open,"
he may even appear hesitant. But there are people who are attracted
by the durability of stone. They want to be massive and impenetrable,
