Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/23

The Question books I refer only in so far as they are manifestations of life.

II

But another question, more subtle and disturbing, must be faced. I have said, "There are two life-forces in the world I know: Jewish and gentile, ours and yours." If this be a truth, we must not be driven from it if, like many other truths, it is overlaid and obscured by the irrelevancies of life, by the intersection and confusion of currents. Here is the gentile life-force: here is the Jewish life-force. What their origin was I cannot say. I can only surmise dimly what circumstances, reacting upon what original impulses, produced the Jewish life-force and the gentile life-force. I can only affirm—to the Jews, in the main, belongs the Jewish life-force, a consistent and coherent force, a direction in human thought and reaction. To you others belongs the gentile life-force, a mode of life and thought distinct from ours. But the bor- 19