V. Conclusion

264 In the time of the Restoration it became different: the ugly concessions were withdrawn, those already drawn were limited, privileges were restored, the Jews were even persecuted anew. They suffered, however, alone: everything suffered in that time: reason, healthy human understanding, universal human rights.

265 It had to come thus, and this epoch had to become a universal epoch of suffering, because one had previously committed the error of holding emancipation possible if the privileges of the religious barriers remained standing, yes were recognised in emancipation itself. Thus one had granted concessions to the Jew as a Jew, therefore also afterwards let him exist as a Jew, that is, as a being which must exclude all others from itself, and make true emancipation impossible for itself. All suffered from this error, since the courage to be a man was still lacking in all. If individual privileges were sacrificed in that time, the main privilege, the original privilege, the heavenly, supernatural, God-given privilege had remained, which must always generate all others anew from itself.

266 The emancipation of the Jews is possible in a thorough, successful and secure way only when they are not emancipated as Jews, i.e., as beings who must always remain foreign to the Christian, but when they make themselves into men who are no longer separated from their fellow men by any barrier, even by any falsely held for essential.

267 Emancipation can therefore also not be tied to the condition that they become Christians — a condition under which they would be privileged only in a different way than they were before. One privilege would only be exchanged for another. The privilege would remain, even if it were extended to several, yes even if to all — to all men.

268 The question of emancipation has therefore hitherto been grasped quite thoroughly falsely on all sides, down to the most individual points which have come up for discussion, if it was treated only as a one-sided one, as the Jewish question. In this way, naturally, one has neither been able to solve it theoretically, nor will one ever be able to solve it practically.

269 He who is not himself free cannot help others to freedom. The servant cannot emancipate. One minor cannot free the other from tutelage, and one privilege can indeed limit another, i.e., through the limitation precisely recognise and make recognisable as privilege, but never will it be able to put universal human right in the place of privilege, if it does not abolish itself.

270 The question of emancipation is a universal question, the question of our age in general. Not only the Jews, but also we want to be emancipated. Only because everything was not free and tutelage and privilege have hitherto ruled, could the Jews also not be free. We all excluded ourselves through our narrowness; everything was limited, and the Jewish quarter necessarily borders on the police quarters into which we are rubricated.

271 Not only the Jews, but also we no longer wish to content ourselves with the chimera; also we want to become real people, real peoples.

272 If the Jews want to become a real people — but they cannot do so in their chimerical nationality, but only in the historically capable and historical nations of our time — then they must give up the chimerical prerogative which, so long as they hold it fast, will always separate them from the peoples and alienate them from history. Their unbelief in the peoples and the exclusive faith in their bottomless nationality they must sacrifice before they can even remotely see themselves in a position to participate sincerely and without secret reservation in real state and national affairs.

273 We, however, must give up unbelief in the world in general and in the justification of man, therefore the exclusive faith in monopoly and tutelage, before we can think of being and remaining real peoples and, within the life of the people, true men.

274 It is impossible that the deeds of the newer critique and the general cry for emancipation and liberation from tutelage should remain without success even for the very nearest future. How great the success for the immediate future will be depends on events whose extent and first decisive success cannot be calculated in advance. One thing, however, is certain: all means will remain only palliative means, will only maintain the discord and give occasion for new struggles over the same question, so long as the one means which is necessary is not applied. This one means is: complete unbelief in unfreedom and faith in freedom and humanity. This faith will finally also prove its fire-zeal — a zeal which will be just as great and invincible as man is greater than privilege and monopoly.

275 "That is extreme! Too extreme!" one will perhaps say.

276 Well, then let one hear the wisdom to which the milieu brings it! The French Jews in relation to religion.

277 Let things only go quietly, is the comforting saying on the standpoint where one would not like to keep the indecision and discomfort of the present forever, but also cannot bring oneself to take the decisive and extreme measure: let things only go quietly by themselves and everything will already make itself. Above all, do not believe that you will be able to accomplish anything with theory. Theory is cruel, inventive in cruelties, and its greatest pleasure is to form collisions out of the slightest difficulties, to draw the lightest entanglements so tightly together until they strangle both parties, in general to drive everything to the peak and to the extreme. Life, on the other hand, is rich in means to circumvent difficulties, to make them harmless and to blunt them; it stills theoretical heat and inflammation and pours oil into the wounds which theory has struck.