Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/151



NE of the wiliest and the most harmful doctrines of our times is, I believe, the fashionable ideology of spiritual anti-Semitism. It attributes to Aryanism, which by the way, is a quantity ethnically if not linguistically enigmatical, many excellent and splendid qualities, while in the Semitic influences and admixtures to the Aryan element it sees nothing but negative energies, which have always hindered the free unfolding of the creative powers of the Aryan genius.

This doctrine would deprive Hellenism of Aphrodite, who came to the Hellenes from the Semites, and would cut the main and most profound root of Christianity, namely its faith in a "transcendental," or, plainly, living God. Spiritual anti-Semitism cuts the body of Christianity into two halves, and keeps only that half