456° 
SALADIN. 
Thou—unless alone of all mankind, 
thou art excepted from the lot of man: 
unless thou only art th’ infallible, 
the wise.—Ye sceptics, is then nothing true, 
but that we’re fools? 
NATHAN. 
Be calm, have patience, Sultan, 
accept man as he is-=if he should err, 
can’t here below infallibly decide,— 
earth is but earth a dull and lightless body. 
SALADIN. 
Ay—but the soul, my Nathan. 
NATHAN. 
Be it light 5 
be it a quenchless spark of fire etherial 5 
or what you will. So long as night inwraps 
this light; so long no tone, no rays no image 
eomes tu thy soul, but thro’ egr, eye, or 
nerves 5 
but what thro’ flesh, or bone, or wand’ring 
juices, 
according to the nature and arrangement 
of thy material part, is modified 
into a thought for thee, and thee alone, 
which could not dwell another human soul : 
so long must feelings, instincts, passions, 
form 
opinion—-error be each mortal’s lot, 
and what sesms truth to one stand with 
another : 
for proven falshood. 
SALADIN, 
_ No: that goes too far. 
‘Then would eath image to himself in flower, 
sun, man, a different something; because 
each ’ ' 
sees not with the same eyes. But do we, 
Nathan, 
not understand each other; although,each 
hears with his own earsonly? Language be 
my pledge, that, between man and truth, at 
least 
no such entire antipathy exists, 
as thou maintainest. Many as our words, 
so many commonly consented truths. 
NATHAN. 
So many images by allacknowleged, + 
which strike on one more strongly than 
another, 
and irritate in different degrees 
our several passions. Teli me, Saladin, 
is passion, truth; vice, truth? Is avarice, 
or tyranny, or sneaking murder, truth: 
or all 6€ monstrous, that the human wish 
by images of sensuality 
is cheated into? 
SALADIN, 
Nathan, O beware 
Jeast with thy wisdom thou impair thy virtue. - 
Little by little, one short footstep more, 
and lo we all are rogues, and must be rogues, 
and my good worthy Nathan--no, to think it 
were blasphemy, werecrime. Man, thy con- 
clusions 
cannot be just; for if truth be illusion, 
then so must virtue. 
Critical Survey of Lessing’s Works. 
[June 1, | 
NATHAN. 
Ts it not contingent ? 
It is the circumstances amid which 
a lucky chance has plac’d thee—’tis the land 
allotted for thy country—tis the men 
with whom thou dwellest-=’tis thy meat, thy 
drink, 
nay e’en the very air that bathes thy brow, 
and above all the early bending given 
to thy yet tender forces, education, 
paternal prejudice, and the first thrust 
with which Fate hurls thee into life’s career, 
hence is thy virtue, man. Soil, weather, 
climate, 
these shape the tree. 
SALADIN. 
The upshot comes of courses 
we have at worst to die, and all is over: 
truth’s but a dream ; virtue, an accident. 
Troth, Nathan, thou art a sage indeed 5 and 
hast eh 
philosophiz’d me nearly into madness. 
How—grows there not upon the self-same. 
soil PAs 
beside the goodly stem the crooked dwarfling? 
NATHAN. 
The fault perhaps was in the seed; perhaps 
a grub, or an unheeded gust of wind, — 
or any of the thousand petty causes, 
whose action and reaction hold together 
this wondrous frame of thingss 
SALADIN. _ ‘ 
- But, my good friend, 
man is not quite a block, alog of wood 
obeying mere external laws. Is he 
chain’d to the earth he springs from? 
east 
is it too sultry for thy virtue, fly, 
gotothe pole. If wine provoke thy blood, , 
drink water: if thy neighbour, seek a better. 
What curbs thy freedom does not therefore 
exclude it. 
Else what were freedom ? 
NATHAN. ) 
A mere play on words$. 
a leading string, with which good easy man 
believes he strays alone, yet can’t advance 
further than his conductress Providence 
ptrmits. °*Tis, if you will, a whirling car—= 
we boys get in, and shout to our companions . 
proudly: ‘* how fast we drive”: but round 
and round 
the eternal measur’d circle of the world 
we are but dragg’d. 
SALADIN. . 
Fie, Nathan, do not squander 
upon such tales, which thou thyself believ’st 
not, 
thy ready wit. Thou dost not talk in earnest; 
for how coula’st thou, who hast a thousand 
times Bees 
in life o’ercome those enemies of virtue 
the passions, and the cravings of our senses, 
with one sword-stroke of reason, thus assert ? 
Thou art but seeking artfully to keep 
truthout of sight. But, Nathan, disputation 
is now no longer mine. 
‘In the 
j NATHAN, : 
