Page:You Gentiles (1924) by Maurice Samuel 1895-1972.djvu/30

You Gentiles explanation in the hope of changing some of its manifestations.

III

We shall not come to understand the nature of the primal difference between gentile and Jew if we attempt to treat it merely as a difference in accepted dogmas and philosophies. A religion, in its formulated essence, is seldom the real religion, the practice and belief. Creeds which in their formulated essence are alien to a people may be accepted by the people. But the true nature of the people asserts itself. The form and dogma of the religion are retained: but the fabric, the institutions, the true reactions which make the religion what it is outside of its sacred books—these are the indices to its actual force and significance. There is such a thing as conversion of a man's opinions: there is no such thing (outside the field of long and laborious psychotherapy in individual cases) as conversion of a man's nature. 26