638 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



LINGEKING BAEBARISM. 



TKANSLAltD FROM THE GERMAIi OF CaRL VoGT BY A. K. MaCDONODGH. 



THE striking feature of the present age is that outcropping of bar- 

 barism which has found in the persecution of the Jews an object 

 for the full exercise of its passionate violence. It is our inheritance 

 of centuries, hard to conquer, enduring as adamantine substance in 

 those races that worked themselves out later than the rest into an ex- 

 istence worthy of man. Spite of all contradiction, I hold fast to this 

 view, because it is true in its inmost core. 



Just as an organism evolves, out of two mutually hostile tendencies, 

 inheritance of character derived from ancestry, and acquirement of 

 new advantages in the struggle for life through adjustment to its en- 

 vironment, so the special nature of a people builds itself up out of the 

 inheritance bequeathed by its forefathers and the conquests it has won 

 for itself in its contest for being. In a people's life, as in the individ- 

 ual's life, there are times when the one or the other of these striving 

 forces steps into the foreground and thrusts the other back. Develop- 

 ment does not advance with even flow, but by fits and starts oftenest 

 it is like that style of march in which two leaj^s are made backward 

 after taking three forward. 



We do leap but it is backward, away into the middle ages, which 

 we fancied we had got rid of. 



The sign and token of our time contrasted with the middle ages is 

 knowledge in contrast to belief ; the exact method of research opposed 

 to the sway of usurped authority ; the free movement of forces all over 

 the globe, as against limitation within narrow bounds and spaces; the 

 peaceful, harmonious working of the nations toward high humane 

 ends, as against their hostile rivalry to the end of subjection and rav- 

 age ; the recognition of common human rights, as against the special 

 claims of isolated castes and ranks. Whatever domain of political life 

 we regard, we note everywhere the same tendency toward that reac- 

 tionary groping after our inheritance from the middle ages. 



Nor is this strange. One who clears his eyes from that whirlwind 

 dust of glory flung abroad by warlike violence, and pictures pure fact 

 to himself, sees that all its substantial results are due only to the sys- 

 tematic development and perfecting of material strength and power. 

 He must logically come to the conclusion that the plant which has 

 been so carefully nurtured and trained to the most vigorous produc- 

 tiveness can not wither down to its very root after this energetic 

 effort. Victory always brings intoxication, and in its paroxysm those 

 spirits are unchained which a sober and quiet life had fettered in the 

 bonds of discretion. We insist on enjoying to the full the inheritance 

 till now only partly spent. 



