TEMPLAR.

But, Jew, your name?
Tis Nathan, is it not? You choose your words
With skill--I am confused. I did not think

NATHAN.

Feign, Templar, and dissemble as you may,
I see the truth. I see your generous heart,
Too honest and too good to be polite.
A grateful girl, all feeling, and her maid
Swift to obey--a father far from home,
You valued her fair fame, and would not see her.
You scorned to tempt lest you should victor prove.
For this too I must tender you my thanks.

TEMPLAR.

You know at least how Templars _ought_ to feel.

NATHAN.

Why Templars only? and why ought to feel?
Is it because your rules and vows enjoin
These duties to _your order_? Sir, I know
How good men all should feel, and know as well
That every country can produce good men.

TEMPLAR.

You'll make distinctions?

NATHAN.

Yes, in colour, form,
And dress, perhaps.

TEMPLAR.

Ay, and in number too--
Here more--there less.

NATHAN.

The difference is not much.
Great men, like trees, have ever need of room;
Too many set together only serve
To crush each other's boughs. The middling sort,
Like us, are found in numbers, they abound;
Only let not one scar and bruise the other,
Let not the gnarl be angry with the stump,
Let not the upper branch alone pretend
Not to have started from the common earth.

TEMPLAR.

Well said. And yet what nation was the first
To scatter discord 'mongst their fellow-men?
To claim the title of "the chosen people?"
How now if I were not to hate them, but
To scorn this upstart nation, for their pride?
That pride which it bequeathed to Mussulman
And Christian, as if God were theirs alone.
You start to hear a Christian and a Templar
Talk thus. But when and where has all this rage,
This pious rage, to win the better God,
And force this better God on all the world,
Shown itself more, or in a blacker form,
Than here, and now? Who here, who now retains
The blinding scales upon his eyes--and yet
Let him be blin