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JEW ISH BOOK ANNUAL
“Mene, Tekel, U pharsin ,” so opens
Conventional Lies
as N ordau ,
a H ungarian Jew living in Paris, compares civilization’s calami
tous state o f affairs to an “immense hospital-ward, the air is filled
with groans and lamentations, and every form o f suffering is to be
seen twisting and tu rn ing on the beds.”2Wherever one looks, atti
tudes characterized by envy, skepticism, pessimism, and disaffec
tion lead to social turmoil, seen in revolutionary socialism,
nihilism, and anti-Semitism. On the personal level, relief is sought
by means o f altered states o f consciousness th rough opium ,
morph ine , or alcohol, and also by alarm ing numbers o f suicides.
In short, the basic problem is one o f failing to adjust “ou r outward
lives into harmony with ou r inward convictions.” As ou tlined by
Nordau in the preface to the first edition, “the presen t social,
political and economic institutions are utterly at variance with the
views and conceptions o f the universe based upon natu ra l
science, and therefo re untenable and doomed to destruc tion .”
As a confirmed freeth inker , N o rdau ’s abusive scorn for all
forms o f established religion permeates his analysis o f the lie o f
religion. To Nordau , “Religion is in fact a physical relic o f the
childhood o f the hum an race.” By this is meant tha t prehistoric
man’s fear of n a tu re ’s malevolent forces has persisted to the pres
en t day in the misplaced belief in an an th ropom o rph ic God
whose worship is perpe tua ted by the “rankest heathenism” con
tained in the oriental concoction called the Holy Bible. Holy
water, therefore, cannot withstand N o rdau ’s rationalist scrutiny
as it is patently no d ifferen t than ord inary household water.
Whereas enlightened n ine teenth-century man has increasingly
come to deny God’s existence as a monstrous lie, the very same lie
is perpe tua ted in state suppo rt o f religious institutions and func
tionaries. This sham is fu r th e r com pounded in the so-called
divine righ t o f kings by which cross and sword are profitably
allied to preserve absolute monarchy u n d e r the facade o f “by the
grace o f God.” Nordau is equally scornful o f the disingenuous
constitutional monarchies tha t p re tend to rep resen t the will o f
the people but are in fact controlled by the hered itary aristocracy
and assorted sycophants. For his scathing indictment o f the p re
2 All references and quote from
The Conventional Lies o f Our Civilization
are from
the authorized edition published by L. Schick, Chicago, 1884, translated from
the seventh edition o f the German original,
Die Konventionellen Liigen der
Menschheit.