168
PARTISAN REVIEW
He has also chosen to be terrifying. One is afraid to irritate him.
No one but he knows to what extremes his wayward passions will
lead him: for this passion has not been provoked from the outside.
He holds it well in hand, he lets himself go as much as he wants,
sometimes relaxing the reins, sometimes tightening them. He is not
afraid of himself: but he reads a disquieting picture in others' eyes
and as he makes his statements his actions conform to this picture.
This external model relieves him of the necessity of seeking his per–
sonality within himself; he has chosen to be all outside, never to
examine his conscience, never to be anything but the very fear he
strikes in others: he is running away from the intimate awareness
that he has of himself even more than from Reason. But, you will
say, what if he were only that way in regard to Jews?
If
he conducted
himself sensibly in regard to all other matters? I answer that this is
impossible: here is a fishmonger who, in 1942, irritated by the com–
petition of two Jewish fishmongers who made a secret of their race,
picked up a pen one day and denounced them. I was assured that
in other respects he was kind and jovial, the best son in the world.
But I don't believe it: a man who finds it natural to denounce men
cannot have our concept of the humane; he does not even see those
whom he aids in the same light as we do; his generosity, his kindness
are not like our kindness, our generosity; one cannot localize passion.
The antisemite willingly admits that the Jew is intelligent and
hard-working. He will even admit that he is inferior to him in this
respect. This concession costs him little. He has put these qualities,
as it were, in parentheses. Or rather, they draw their merit from the
man who possesses them: the more virtues a Jew has, the more
dangerous he is.
As
for the antisemite, he has no illusions about what
he is. He considers himself an average man, modestly average, and
in the last analysis a mediocre person. There is no example of an
antisemite claiming individual superiority over the Jews. But do not
believe for a second that this mediocrity is cause for shame. On the
contrary, he is well satisfied with it, I might even say he has chosen it.
This man is afraid of any kind of solitude, that of the genius as well
as that of the murderer: he. is the man of the mob; no matter how short
he is, he still takes the precaution of stooping for fear of standing out
from the herd and of finding himself face to face with himself.
If
he
has become an antisemite, it is because one cannot be antisemitic
alone. This sentence: "I hate the Jews," is a sentence which is said
in chorus; by saying it one connects oneself with a tradition and a com–
munity: that of the mediocre man. It is also well to recall that by
