206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gratitude. But it is also an occasion on which we are glad to think 

 of our sovereign as weighing and pondering the affairs of his people, 

 and the general condition of Germany ; and passing under review the 

 most important events of the time, carefully measuring their gravity. 

 And so our thoughts turn naturally to the most recent events, to the 

 serious problems, which are now pressing with so loud and urgent a 

 voice upon our attention. 



Xot the least of these is the Semitic question, which has been 

 agitating Germany for some years. The parties stand sharply over 

 against one another, and as, in the thirteenth century, the cry was 

 "Here Guelph, there Ghibelline," so now there sounds through the Ger- 

 man lands, " Here Semite and friend of the Semite, there anti-Semite." 

 With no little astonishment have we perceived that the conflict rages 

 most violently just in the principal city of the empire, and even among 

 those belonging to the aristocracy of culture. And, although the 

 south of Germany is thus far much less involved in the agitation than 

 the north, the forces in motion there are not without influence in our 

 own vicinity. In our days, science may no longer, as was formerly 

 the case, keep aloof in self -contented attitude from the great mart of 

 life ; rather has it the strongest reasons for participating, with the 

 ripest results it has reached, in the solution of the problems of our 

 age and nation, and for allying itself, to the end of mutual advantage, 

 with all clarifying and quickening social forces. 



So let one of the offerings presented by the Academy, on this the 

 natal day of its royal protector, be an attempt to show how these 

 things have come to be : how the knot, the manner of whose loosing 

 no one is now able to indicate, has gradually twisted itself ; and how 

 History, wise guide of life that she is, holds up to the new errors that, 

 are threatening us the warning mirror of the errors of the past. 



The fortunes of the Jewish people make, perhaps, the most im- 

 pressive drama in the history of the world. 



The Greek tragedians dwell with predilection on the Hybris, the 

 arrogant misuse of power, as the dark fate that draws men on to de- 

 struction. In the fortunes of this people we encounter, as it were, an 

 Hybris made up of religious fanaticism, vulgar avarice, and instinctive 

 race-aversion. It was the result of that moral and intellectual infirm- 

 ity which, for many centuries, has affected the highest as well as the 

 lowest classes, and which still to some degree exists in wide circles, 

 although kept in bounds by custom, fear, and public opinion. This 

 infirmity was and is, in a word, a lack of the sense of justice. 



We know well the powers that still to-day, in every possible form, 

 whether open or disguised, are constantly repeating this one thought : 

 "We alone are in possession of the full and saving truth, and therefore 

 everything must be conceded to, and everything permitted us, that is 

 necessary or serviceable in spreading and putting forward this truth." 

 Where this principle prevails, and it did prevail in the entire thousand 



