One might use many figures of speech.
Matthew Arnold's antithesis of Hellenic thinking to Hebraic doing needs
much qualification. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the
Hebraic spirit is heat, the Hellenic spirit is light. Hebraism means
moral fervour; Hellenism means intellectual sensibility. Hebraism
suggests strength of conviction, tenacity of resolve, prophetic
vehemence; Hellenism suggests flexibility of thought, adaptability to
circumstances, artistic serenity. Hebraism suggests the austere and
spiritual life, Hellenism the social and sensuous life. Yet none of
these brief antitheses can be wholly or exclusively true. The difference
is not thus to be labelled away, any more than one can label the
difference between scents of flowers or tones of voices. There are two
experiences which are apt to change the whole complexion of things; the
one is religious conversion, the other falling in love. Yet how could
one sum up the transformation except by those terms "converted" and "in
love"? So, when the Hebrew, morally introspective, reliant on some great
power outside himself, fervid in his beliefs as in his passions, intense
in his imaginations and enthusiasms, is compared with the Hellene, a
being intellectually open and curious, artistically sensitive, a
cultivator of humanity and its delights, many-sided and self-possessed,
by what condensed terms shall one describe their diverse ways of taking
the whole of life and its concerns? In default of such terms let us hear
a modern descendant of Israel, one who was at the time half thinking of
this very distinction. Heinrich Heine, though an apostate from Judaism,
and though he liked to fancy himself a Hellene, was nevertheless by
constitution a Hebrew. He describes a visit which he paid to Goethe,
than whom in form and mind and principle no more perfect Hellene ever
lived in Hellas itself. When Heine came face to face with Goethe at
Weimar, he tells us that he felt as if Goethe must be Jupiter, and that
he involuntarily glanced aside to see whether the eagle was not there
with the thunderbolt in his beak. He almost addressed him in Greek, but,
finding he "understood German," he made the profound remark that the
plums on the road were delicious. And now, hear how Heine draws the
contrast between the Hellenic Teuton and himself, the Teutonic Hebrew:
"At bottom Goethe and I are opposite natures and mutually repellent. He
is essentially a man on whom life sits eas