FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



Russian ideal. In Austria it is believed 

 that if the Jews are allowed to go on 

 as they are going on they will get every- 

 thing into their hands — the land of the 

 peasants, the sources of public informa- 

 tion and the press, and the nerves by 

 which trade and commerce are moved. 

 In Germany it is much the same story, 

 and there the Jews are believed, unless 

 stopped in time, to be about to monopo- 

 lize the universities. In France it is 

 thought that the Jews, if not put down 

 with the strong hand, will capture the 

 W'hole administration, as well as " stran- 

 gle commerce by their octopus grip." 

 The Jews are called a " parasitic race," 

 whatever that may mean. It is said 

 that the Jew never becomes an agri- 

 culturist, that he is a usurer and a 

 bloodsucker, that he is a gross material- 

 ist, and that he has no ideals beyond 

 the precious metals; and that they ha- 

 bitually act together to further their 

 own racial interests and to injure those 

 communities which have been foolish 

 enough to trust them. To take the 

 charge of want of patriotism first. How 

 is it substantiated? We can not say 

 that we have ever seen any real evidence 

 of want of patriotism in the Jews. Look 

 at the ease of France at present. There 

 is something extremely pathetic in the 

 way in which the French Jews cling to 

 their nationality in spite of all the 

 hatred they inspire. The truth is, the 

 Jew is a sort of expert in patriotism. 

 Did not the Maccabees teach the Avorld 

 one of its first lessons in patriotism? 

 Depend upon it, if the Jew is only al- 

 lowed to be a patriot he will not fail 

 here. The charge, indeed, is like that 

 so often made in Russia against the 

 Jews. They are accused of not tilling 

 the soil, their accusers ignoring the fact 

 that no Jew is allowed to buy, or to 

 lease, or to occupy land, and is, in fact, 

 excluded by law from acting as a farmer. 

 Take next the charge of " aloofness." 

 Probably this charge is well founded, 

 but what can be expected of a people 

 so newly freed from the Ghetto ? If you 

 treat a race for centuries as lepers, and 

 visit its members with dire penalties, if 

 they do not keep " aloof " they are like- 

 ly to remain for some time disinclined 

 to free intercourse. The third charge is, 

 in reality, that the Jews of the world, 

 having obtained control of cosmopolitan 

 finance, act together in the interests of 



their race, and inflict grievous injuries 

 upon the nations. But what proof is 

 there of this? Curiously enough, Mr. 

 Arnold WMte — though in other ways 

 he seems to encourage this charge — ac- 

 cuses the great Jewish financiers of not 

 doing this very thing. He tells us that 

 after the Russians had driven the Jews 

 into the Pale they wanted to raise a 

 loan. One would have expected the 

 great Jewish loanmongers to have ab- 

 solutely refused to help the enemy of 

 the race. Instead they basely, as we 

 think, found Russia the money she 

 wanted. But though this was a base 

 act, it certainly is not consistent with 

 the charge that the Jews control the 

 international money market for tribal 

 ends. We believe, in fact, that this 

 whole charge is a pure delusion. The 

 great financiers, w'hether Jew or Gen- 

 tile, look for a profit, and not to deep 

 and mysterious racial aspirations. The 

 charge that the Jews are steeped in ma- 

 terialism, and so are a demoralizing ele- 

 ment in the community, is equally un- 

 fair and absurd. Many Jews may be 

 fond of pomp of a vulgar kind, and may 

 aflect what we confess personally to 

 finding very disagreeable forms of Asi- 

 atic luxury; but these are externals. In 

 essentials and as a race the Jews are 

 no more materialistic than their neigh- 

 bors. And can we say that they are 

 a demoralizing element when it is uni- 

 versally confessed that the Jews are 

 among the best fathers, sons, and hus- 

 bands in the world? 



Death of Professor Bunsen. — With 



the death of Robert Wilhelra Bunsen, 

 at Heidelberg, August ICth, the world 

 loses a student whose name is insepai'a- 

 bly connected with nearly all the chem- 

 ical work that has been done in the 

 last fifty years, for it is safe to say that 

 hardly a discovery has been made or 

 experiment performed to the success of 

 which some process, property, or instru- 

 ment discovered, invented, or suggested 

 by Bunsen, and usually named after 

 him, has not contributed. A sketch of 

 this illustrious chemist, with a portrait, 

 and an enumeration of his principal 

 works, each of which might be charac- 

 terized as a milestone in the advance of 

 the science, was published in the Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly for August, 1881 

 (vol. xix, page 550). One of the prin- 



