ZIONISM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ITS VICTIMS 63 withered into superstition. In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confes­ sion of the divine Unity, the sou) of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking towards a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West— which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.J “ The illumination o f great facts which widen feeling” is a typical phrase for E liot, and there is no doubt that her approbation for her Zionists derives from her belief that they were a group almost exactly expressing her own grand ideas about an expanded life o f feelings. Y e t if there is a felt reality about “ the peoples o f the W est,” there is no such reality for the "peoples o f the E ast." T hey arc nam ed, it is true, but are no more substantial than a phrase. T he few references to the East in Daniel Deronda are always to E ngland’s Indian colonies, for whose people— as people having wishes, values, aspirations— Eliot expresses the com plete indifference of absolute silence. O f the fact that Zion will be “ planted" in the East, Eliot takes no very detailed account; it is as if the phrase “ the people o f the East and the W est” covers what will, territorially at least, be a neutral inaugural reality. In turn, that reality will be replaced by a permanent accomplishment when the newly founded state becom cs the “ medium o f transmission and understanding.” For how could Eliot imagine that even Eastern people would object to such grand benefits for all? There is, however, a disturbing insistence on these matters when Mordecai continues his speech. For him, Zionism means that "ou r race takes on again the character o f a nationality . . . a labour which shall be a worthy fruit o f the long anguish