XVI 



TABLE-TALK 399 



the Jewish part was about as big as the county of 

 Gloucester. How few boys realise this, though they 

 are taught classical geography. 



"The real chosen people were the Greeks. One 

 of the most remarkable thinars about them is not 

 only the smallness, but the late rise of Attica, where- 

 as Magna Grsecia flourished in the eighth century. 

 The Greeks were doing everything — piracy, trade, 

 fighting, expelling the Persians. Never was there so 

 large a number of self-governing communities. 



" They fell short of the Jews in morality. How 

 curious is the tolerant attitude of Socrates, like a 

 modern man of the world talking to a young fellow 

 who runs after the girls. The Jew, however he fell 

 short in other respects, set himself a certain standard 

 in cleanliness of life, and would not fall below it. 

 The more creditable to him, because these vices were 

 the offspring of the Semitic races among whom the 

 Jew lived. 



" There is a curious similarity between the position 

 of the Jew in ancient times and what it is now. They 

 were procurers and usurers among the Gentiles, yet 

 many of them were singularly high-minded and pure. 

 All too with an intense clannishness, the secret of 

 their success, and a sense of superiority to the Gentile 

 which would prevent the meanest Jew from sitting 

 at table with a proconsul. 



"The most remarkable achievement of the Jew 

 was to impose on Europe for eighteen centuries his 

 own superstitions — his ideas of the supernatural. 



