176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Every dog trained as a hunter or herder is a specialist, and is 

 prized for one fine capacity attained in some degree at the expense 

 of mental proportion and symmetry ; in miscellaneous matters 

 outside of his province he may be easily surpassed by any under- 

 bred and mongrel but many-sided village cur. Modern scholarship 

 shows a like tendency to psychical alogotrophy or one-sided intel- 

 lectual growth. As science deepens its researches, each depart- 

 ment of investigation becomes more distinct, and the toiler in the 

 mines of knowledge is forced to confine his labors to a single lode 

 if he would exhaust the treasures it contains. He sees clearly so 

 far as his lantern casts its rays ; but all outside of this small 

 luminous circle is dense darkness. 



If a race of superior beings had taken charge of man's educa- 

 tion for thousands of years and conducted it on the same princi- 

 ple as that which has guided us in domesticating and utilizing 

 the lower animals, what maimed specimens of humanity would 

 have been the result ! Slavery has always tended to produce this 

 effect ; but the slave, however degraded his condition, speaks the 

 same language as his master, thereby profiting from his inter- 

 course with those who are placed over him, and sharing in the 

 general progress of society more fully than any dumb animal 

 could do. So, too, the position which Christian intolerance as- 

 signed to the Jews for many centuries, closing to them all 

 branches of industry except usury, developed in them a peculiar 

 talent for finance, together with many hard and offensive traits 

 of character naturally growing out of money brokerage, and 

 finally becoming almost innate. In the middle ages they were 

 made to serve as sponges to suck ujd the people's substance in 

 order that it might be squeezed out of them at the convenience of 

 the rulers. King John II, surnamed the Good, issued in 1360 a 

 decree permitting the Jews in his realm to take, as compensation 

 for loaning money, " quatre deniers par livre par semaine,'' equiva- 

 lent to ninety per cent per annum, not from any feeling of favor- 

 itism for the Israelites, but, as he expressly stated, because " the 

 greater the privileges enjoyed by the Jews, the better they will 

 be able to pay the taxes levied on them by the king." This 

 " good " monarch was wont to confiscate periodically a large por- 

 tion of the pillage thus obtained in order to replenish his ex- 

 hausted exchequer, and was actually praised by his subjects for 

 punishing Jewish rapacity. It was a system of indirect taxation 

 Avorthy of modern tariff legislators. 



In the early part of the thirteenth century, Frederic II, the 

 Hohenstaufen, ordained that the Jews should be permitted to dwell 

 in Nuremberg and to lend money on interest, stating that, "inas- 

 much as this sinful business is essential to trade and to the com- 

 mercial prosperity of the city, it would be a lesser evil to let the 



