A victorious majority will be the first to become unfaithful to its own cause. It has triumphed; it is, after all the majority. Its cause is now safe and secure. Its struggle is a matter of the past, and therefore can be ignored. Let minds and spirits now turn to new aspirations, new perceptions. The ancient truth for which that majority struggles so hard and whose victory had cost them so dearly now stands safe beneath the palladium of this very majority…And so the triumphant majority considers it sufficient to preserve, or if possible to increase, the numbers of its adherents. But the spiritual content of the triumphant truth is no longer cultivated; it is slowly forgotten. It will still survive as a resounding word as a name inscribed upon the banner of the majority; it will pass as a shallow watchword from generation to generation. But its core is empty, or in may instances is filled with ideas of a different character. (page 239)
However, precisely such complete dedication to its cause may easily lead the minority into intellectual one-sidedness. This may well stunt to a degree the development of the minority’s unique intellectual life. Furthermore, it may make that minority incapable of representing its cause effectively to the outside world. Thus, such one-sidedeness in a minority may do grave damage to the very cause that the minority seeks to preserve and to promote. The richer the minority’s cause, the more will the minority treasure it. But then it may easily come to regard all other knowledge in “outside” domains as unnecessary, or even as utterly worthless. It may reject all intellectual activity in any field outside its own as an offense against its own cause, as an inroad upon the devotion properly due to that cause and and infringement on its prerogatives.
Such a one-sided attitude does not stop at mere disregard for other intellectual endeavors. Once this attitude has taken hold in the Jewish minority, that minority will be unable to form a proper judgment and a true image of those intellectual pursuits which are not cultivated in its own ranks but pursued mainly by its opponents. Then, as a result of simple ignorance, the minority will begin to fear that which at first it merely neglected out of disdain. Consequently, the minority will begin to suspect the existence of an intrinsic close relationship between these “outside” intellectual pursuits and those principles to which the Jewish minority stands in opposition. (page 247)
R Hirsch Collected Writings Vol II
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