humanist. From his watch-tower—apparently "in the skies"—he has launched lightnings of derision at those who still weave garlands for their Lares and Penates, at the nationalist with his "selective sympathies," at the traditionalist with his sentimental fondness for folk-ways. Those who feel strongly attracted, as I do myself, to the Ciceronian and Stoic conception of a universal humanity and by the Christian and Augustinian vision of a universal City of God, may easily have mistaken Mr. Lewisohn for a "sharpshooter" of the next age, an outpost from the land of their heart's desire. But in Up Stream, Mr. Lewisohn drops the mask and reveals himself, for all his Jewish radicalism,[1] as essentially a sentimental and homesick German, longing in exile for a Germany which exists only in his imagination.
Even the purified and liberated mind of a Child of Light, living according to nature and reason, is unable to rid itself wholly of "selective sympathies." It betrays under provocation a merely "traditional
- ↑ In a notably competent article on "The Case of Mr. Lewisohn," which appeared in The Menorah Journal of June, 1922, Professor Jacob Zeitlin writes: "Whether entirely just or strongly colored, it is evident that Mr. Lewisohn's criticism of State Universities has little relevance to his character as a Jew. It indicates nothing more than that his sensitive æsthetic organism recoiled in pain from an environment that was uncongenial. And the same observation holds concerning his reaction toward American life in general. He but adds his voice to a chorus of growing volume, reiterating the now familiar burden of the crudeness and narrowness of our political and social ideas. There is ample ground for such a protest as he makes, but it is not a protest that can be identified with any recognizably Jewish outlook."
