And so did science (from scientia, “knowledge”), another transgressive Mercurian specialty closely related to the arts and crafts. For many Jews, the transition from the study of the Law to the study of the laws of nature proved congenial and extremely successful. The new science of the individual (named after Psyche, the Greek for “soul” and the perennial victim of Eros’s cruelty) was an almost exclusively Jewish affair; the new science of society seemed to the literary historian Friedrich Gundolph (né Gundelfinger) a “Jewish sect”; and virtually all of the old sciences, perhaps especially physics, mathematics, and chemistry, benefited enormously from the influx of Jews. At least five of the nine Nobel Prizes won by German citizens during the Weimar years went to scientists of Jewish descent, and one of them, Albert Einstein, joined Rothschild in becoming an icon of the Modern Age. Or rather, Rothschild remained a name, a ghostly symbol of the “invisible hand,” whereas Einstein became a true icon: an image of the divine, the face of the mind, the prophet of Prometheanism.21
At the turn of the twentieth century, the spectacular Jewish success in the central compartments of modern life provoked a vigorous debate about its origins. Some of the arguments and outbursts are routinely included in histories of anti-Semitism, but there was a lot more to the debate than anti-Semitism (however defined). Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the racist ideologue and breathless poet of the “free and loyal” Teuton, offered several tenuously related but influential explanations for the fateful (and altogether “negative”) fact that the Jews had become “a disproportionately important and in many spheres actually dominant constituent of our life.” First, there was the apparently innate Jewish “possession of an abnormally developed will,” which gave rise to their “phenomenal elasticity.” Second, there was their historically formed faith, which lacked “abstract inconceivable mysteries,” politicized man’s relationship to God, equated morality with blind obedience to the law, and spawned the corrosive rationalism that had proved the nemesis of the free and loyal Teuton. Finally—and most fatefully—“Judaism and its product, the Jew,” were responsible for “the idea of physical race-unity and race-purity”: the very idea that Chamberlain admired in the Teutons and urged them to safeguard in the face of the Jewish onslaught. The future Nazi prophet condemned the Jews for inventing nationalism and intolerance. “Sin is for them a national thing, whereas the individual is ‘just’ when he does not transgress the ‘law’; redemption is not the moral redemption of the individual, but the redemption of the State; that is difficult for us to understand.”22
Joseph Jacobs, a prominent Jewish historian and folklorist, agreed with Chamberlain that there was a special relationship between the Jews and the Modern Age, but he had a much higher opinion of both. In his account, Jewish “thinkers and sages with eagle vision took into their thought the destinies of all humanity, and rang out in clarion voice a message of hope to the down-trodden of all races. Claiming for themselves and their people the duty and obligations of a true aristocracy, they held forth to the peoples ideals of a true democracy founded on right and justice.” Jacobs’s explanations for the Jewish preeminence are similar to Chamberlain’s, if much more concise and consistent. Regarding religion as a possibly important but ultimately elusive factor, he attributes Jewish success to heredity, or “germ-plasm.” “There is a certain probability,” he argues, “that a determinate number of Jews at the present time will produce a larger number of ‘geniuses’ (whether inventive or not, I will not say) than any equal number of men of other races. It seems highly probable, for example, that German Jews at the present moment are quantitatively (not necessarily qualitatively) at the head of European intellect.” The spread of such high intellectual ability over dissimilar environments would seem to confirm the theory of a common ancestry of contemporary Jews, and “if this be so, the desirability of further propagation of the Jewish germ-plasm is a matter not merely of Jewish interest.” One proof is the observable success of the “Jewish half-breeds”: “their existence, in large number, is sufficient to disprove Chamberlain’s contention of the radical superiority of the German over the Jewish germ-plasm.”23
Werner Sombart had little use for the germ-plasm. “What the race-theorists have produced is a new sort of religion to replace the old Jewish or Christian religion. What else is the theory of an Aryan, or German, ‘mission’ in the world but a modern form of the ‘chosen people’ belief?” Instead, he argues that the “Jewish genius” stems from perennial nomadism, first of the pastoral, then of the trading kind. “Only in the shepherd’s calling, never in the farmer’s, could the idea of gain have taken root, and the conception of unlimited production have become a reality. Only in the shepherd’s calling could the view have become dominant that in economic activities the abstract quantity of commodities matters, not whether they are fit or sufficient for use.” The Jews are the nomads of Europe. “ ‘Nomadism’ is the progenitor of Capitalism. The relation between Capitalism and Judaism thus becomes more clear.”
What does become clear from Sombart’s account of the relation between capitalism and Judaism is that nomadism is scarcely more useful to his cause than the germ-plasm. Sombart’s book The Jews and Modern Capitalism was a response to Max Weber, and most of his argument was entirely—if imperfectly—Weberian. Capitalism is inconceivable without the Protestant ethic; Judaism is much more Protestant (older, tougher, and purer) than Protestantism; Judaism is the progenitor of Capitalism. “The whole religious system is in reality nothing but a contract between Jehovah and his chosen people, a contract with all its consequences and all its duties.” Every Jew has an account in Heaven, and every Jew’s purpose in life is to balance it by following written rules. To follow the rules, one has to know them; hence “the very study itself is made a means of rendering life holy.” Relentless study and obedience impel one “to think about one’s actions and to accomplish them in harmony with the dictates of reason.” Ultimately, religion as law aims “at the subjugation of the merely animal instincts in man, at the bridling of his desires and inclinations and at the replacing of impulses by thoughtful action; in short, at the ‘ethical tempering of man.’ ” The result is worldly asceticism rewarded by earthly possessions, or Puritanism without pork.24
The rationalization of life accustomed the Jew to a mode of living contrary to (or side by side with) Nature and therefore also to an economic system like the capitalistic, which is likewise contrary to (or side by side with) Nature. What in reality is the idea of making profit, what is economic rationalism, but the application to economic activities of the rules by which the Jewish religion shaped Jewish life? Before capitalism could develop the natural man had to be changed out of all recognition, and a rationalistically minded mechanism introduced in his stead. There had to be a transvaluation of all economic values. And what was the result? The homo capitalisticus, who is closely related to the homo Judaeus, both belonging to the same species, homines rationalistici artificiales.25