OUR. DEBT TO THE JEWS.* IN all the social changes

which Europe has suffered during the last two generations, nothing has been more remarkable than the triumphant rapidity with which the Jews have taken advantage of every breach in that ancient wall of prejudice which the injustice of centuries has raised against them.

There is hardly a field of human endeavour in which they have not played a prominent part during the past fifty years. The triumph is one of which the nation may reasonably be proud, and it is just this pride which has inspired M. Hauser to set his hand to the colossal study now under consideration.

M. Hauser calls his book The Greeks and the Sentitee in the History of Humanity, and his avowed object is to trace the

course of Greek and Jewish influence throughout the develop- ment of human thought. His own view of what the world owes to the Greek and the Jew respectively may be summed up in the dictum of Lithe Les premiers oat eclair6 is monde de l'eternelle lumitsre de In philosophic) et de la, science et y oat jeth des types immortels de beaut6 qui le charment et inspirent : les seconds ont les premiers inangurb le monoth6isme parmi les nations, monothdisme d'ok sont sortie le ohristianisme d'abord, le mahomedanisme ensuite."

l. Hauser might have added the further contrast which Josephus made so tellingly in his tract "Against Apion," that

the --Imo were the first to set the world a pure ideal of family life and morality, an ideal which the Greeks persistently

neglected, with the result that the Jew has kept his nationality untainted and strong through centuries of oppression, while the Greek has been degenerate since the Roman Conquest. M. Hauser, however, 'is content to follow out LittrUa idea: dividing the progress of the evolution of humanity into seven stages, initiated respectively by the Egyptians, the Phcenicians, the Greeks, the Jews (before the Captivity), the Jews of Babylon, the Arabs, the Renaissance, and the French Revolution, he credits the jews with the introduction of the great principle of

monotheism, which he regards (and here one may cordially agree with him) asb

elevation of the hug been the most powerful agent in the man conscience. No doubt it was the religious passion of the Jew which played the largest part in forcing this groat dogma up not a Jewish monopoly. on Europe, but the belief in it was Even M. Hauser is compelled to give the Egyptians credit for some knowledge of the doctrine, but that knowledge was, he maintains, confined to the priestly

• Lea Grecs et loo gentiles duns l'h• toi o de 11 tattiti r Ph Parts: A. Maloine, 25-27 Rue do PRool'ederModeuir:ou." [12 6.] "air. class ; in none of the many cults and empires of Egypt were the mass of the people anything but idolaters. M. Hauser might perhaps, had be not bad his thesis at his elbow, have given some consideration to the view (so ably expounded by Dr. Budge in his recent volume) that the many gods of Egypt stood in the same relation to the One as do the angels and archangels to God in medieval theology. The domination of his set purpose has also driven M. Hauser to be not a little unjust to the achievement of the Greeks, to whom he is compelled to deny any sort of religious idealism. He gives them credit, it is true, for having understood better than any other nation the material and intellectual needs of mankind, and having contributed more than any other to the perfection of reason and the creation of art; but, he says, they did nothing to pro- mote that realization of the unity of mankind to which, in bis eyes, all our moral progress is due. Ho denies them any unity of national feeling or moral aspiration. To him Greece is simply an aggregation of small selfish cities, wonderfully cul- tured and wonderfully gifted, it is true, but without solidarity or national ideal. M. Hauser would have come nearer to the true meaning of Greek history had he given more considera- tion to the light which recent discoveries have thrown on the early /Egean civilizations which were the cradle of the Greek. It is only by a knowledge of these that one can gain a true conception of what the Greek accomplished in the laborious evolution of the State, an achievement which was surely almost as essential a step in the progress towards human solidarity as was the advance from the many gods to the Ono. Yet there is no mention of Minos in M. Hauser's book, and his treatment of the early history of the /Egean is summary to the verge of incorrectness, while of the political achievement of the city-State, of the national spirit which showed itself at Salamis and Marathon, he has not sword to say. When he comes to deal with the Jewish contribution to the world's advance- ment the treatment is very much fuller and more instructive. Nothing could be more interesting than the pages which trace the development of the Jewish ideal from the time when, after the Persian conquest of Babylon, contact with the noble doctrines of Zoroaster raised the primitive mono- theism of the Pentateuch to the heights of an exalted philosophy. The subsequent conflict with Greek ideals after the conquests of Alexander, the reconciliation of Greek and Jewish thought by the Nooplatonists of Alexandria, and the rise of Judaism to its zenith under the Arab conquest are admirably and clearly described, and with a detail not to be found in any other work of such general interest.

What faults there are in the treatment of these centuries are faults of omission. Europe was surely not so sterile before the Renaissance as M. Hauser would have us believe. You can- not dismiss scholastic philosophy with a sneer as the onailla theologiae. The legacy of Aristotle was not so entirely barren during these centuries which preceded the Renaissance. Nor can one ignore the achievement of the mystics which kept the flame of Christ's teaching alive in a time of great darkness. Yet M. Hauser leaves both sehoolmen and mystics with hardly a word and hurries on to the regeneration of human thought which succeeded the Renaissance and the Reforma-

tion. From this point his analysis is as full as one could possibly wish ; there is not a philosopher from Bacon to Bergson and William James whose achievement is not clearly and fully summarized. Indeed, so abundant is the writer's knowledge and enthusiasm that the original purpose of his study is for a time forgotten, and the book develops into a

dictionary of modern philosophy. But M. Hauser can never write with the frigidity of the lexicographer. He approaches

his subject from a standpoint intensely Jewish and intensely modern, and this must be borne in mind in dealing with many of his conclusions. Thus he takes as the four great minds.

which have made epochs in the world's history, Moses, Jesus Christ, Spinoza, and Karl Marx. With all possible respect for the immense intellect of Spinoza and the romantic energy and idealism of Marx, ought one not rather to look to Bacon and to Darwin as the two minds which set the measure for their respective ages P The same partiality is evident in his dealing with any philosopher whose career shows any tendency to make terms with mysticism. The lapse of Blaise Pasoal is brusquely dismissed as a phase of mental

degeneration. Descartes' uncertainties are due to nothing but timidity, Auguste Comte's final leanings towards Ecolesiasticis tu to the weakening of an old man's brain. The same partiality leads him also to accept at second hand statements which a little investigation must have disproved. Who that knew Disraeli and England could have described his writings as "tout co q u'il y a de plus anglais dans l'esprit et dans la forme"? M. Hauser would have done well to seek some other example of the adaptability of the Jew. Again, to state that Lombroso has proved, " d'une xnani4e indiscutable," all criminal sots to be due to a diseased state of the physical organism is to show a complete ignorance of the results of recent research. But there is a saving quality in M. Hauser's occasional reck- lessness, the same quality which leads him in his catalogue of Jewish triumphs in the world of modern thought to recount of M. Vambery how " lorsqu'il publia eon livre, The Coming Struggle for India, ii fut invite par In Reine Victoria it diner avec elle it Windsor Castle le lundi 6 mai et it rester lit jusqu'au lendemain." And, again, of Sir Francis Palgrave "Ii publia plusieurs ouvrages sur rhistoire anglaise, trbs estimes, an point que Ia Reins d'Angleterre lui accorda un titre de noblesse." One cannot criticise an enthusiasm so ingenuous.

And, indeed, in spite of these occasional blemishes—blemishes inevitable in a work of such tremendous scope—M. Haueer's volume is one of real value, not only as a panegyric of the great race to which (one imagines) he has the honour to belong, but also as a clear and easily intelligible story of the achieve- ment of the human mind since the dawn of history. Whether one's political views agree with the writer's or not, one cannot but be grateful to the industry, learning, and enthusiasm which have made the writing of his book a possibility, and make the reading of it a recreation. It is to be hoped that before long the English reader will have an opportunity of studying it in a translation.