he consciously or unconsciously gave a Western position to the Bible by omitting it from his list. Indeed, when one turns over the weary, dreary pages of these volumes, the contrast both as literature and as inspiration is indeed striking. Mr. Chamberlain, who so frequently insists upon the superiority of the Indo-Teuton religion, ought, as a punishment, to be compelled to read through the whole of the fifty volumes of the Sacred Books of the East.

Chief among the contrasts which differentiate the Bible from the other Sacred Books of the East is the notion of progress, which is so essentially European and incidentally, I may say, prophetic. Bagehot used to insist upon the extreme rarity of the notion of progress in the history of humanity. Savages regard what is as the norm; they cannot conceive of change either in the past or the future. As against this, the Hebrew prophets, with splendid indignation, regarded the present condition of their nation as abominable, and felt a confident hope that the divine plan of the universe involved an amelioration not alone for themselves but for the whole world.

Now in the divine plan of the prophets there

were two elements which distinguished the Hebraic ideals from those of all others and which have extorted the imagination and admiration of Europe. The first of these is the idealization of the poor and suffering as the type of the good man.1 The Bible is emphatically on the side of the "under-dog," and in prophetic diction God is mainly regarded as the Protector of the poor. This is against the whole spirit of classical antiquity, which regards the Kalokagathos as the ideal man, and always regards the gods as fighting on the side of the winners in life's battles. Indeed, though Europe has nominally accepted the Hebraic idealization of the poor and has done heroic work of recent years on the divine plan of the Hebrew prophets, yet it has been on the whole against the grain, and the natural tendency of the natural man is to applaud and to admire the rich and strong. Nietzsche, as is well known, developed a whole anti-Gospel on these lines.

The second unexpected ideal of the Hebrew prophets is that which holds up peace as the final aim of humanity. This ideal again is far

1

1 See Isidore Loeb, La Religion des Pauvres dans la Bible, Paris, 1892.

from being congenial to the European or even to the Indo-European character. The warrior is the ideal type among Brahmins, Homeric Hellenes, Romans, Celts, and Vikings. The charmé or battle-joy of the Greeks and the Berserkir rage of the Vikings illustrate what I mean.' Even to the present day the soldier is the idol of the populace, and men who profess the Gospel of the Prince of Peace have not been ashamed to advocate a gospel of war. Whenever an additional subsidy was needed in the Reichstag, Moltke would dilate upon the ennobling and selfsacrificing character of the soldier's life, and his successor, Von der Goltz, has written down a veritable gospel of war in his Nation in Arms.2

Yet though Europe has only imperfectly assimilated the Jewish ideals of poverty as spiritual

1

'My friend, Prof. R. G. Moulton, points out, in the Introduction to his Modern Readers' Bible, that the war idea is kept alive nowadays by reading the Greek and Roman classics and literature derived from them; he considers Bible readings would be an antidote.

2 Even Robert Louis Stevenson, in an interview he once gave at San Francisco, declared that he did not see the superiority of the slow deaths caused by commercial competition over the quick and honorable departure from the world on the battlefield. Only in these latter days are men gradually being convinced of the iniquity of war by its disastrous effects upon the Stock Exchange (Norman Angell).

riches and of peace as the international goal, after all it has accepted these aims as part of the notion of progress, which it took over in large measure from the Hebrew Bible. Certainly there is no incongruity in Europe accepting Jews into its spiritual brotherhood because of its imperfect acceptance of the ideals of poverty and peace. There are movements on either side which, at any rate in regard to the former ideal, have made an approximation easy. St. Francis took poverty for his bride, and made it the badge of his friars, while Jews, on the other hand, have, from historic and human reasons, laid aside a good deal of the old Hebraic admiration for poverty, emphasizing rather the very human view of biblical wisdom that wealth should be the reward of virtue.

I have laid stress upon the identity of ideals among modern Europeans and modern Jews owing to their common derivation from the ideals of the Hebrew Bible, because, as it seems to me, this is the dominating fact in discussing what is known as the Jewish question. This, in the last resort, is raised by the doubts cast by the higher anti-Semites whether Jews have sufficiently the same ideals to be received within

the higher culture of Europe and America without danger to that culture. If indeed there were such fundamental differences of ideals between Jews and others,' there might be something in the "cultural menace," of which some academic anti-Semites in America speak so glibly when talking of Jews. Cultures can only cross-fertilize when they are sufficiently alike to form part of the same species. If they are absolutely incongruous, however perfect each may be in its own way, any attempt to combine the two must necessarily result in failure. Take the case of the Japanese. From what I have seen, heard, and read of the Japanese nation, they have a sensitiveness of honor (Bushido), an intensity of patriotism, a joyousness of outlook upon life, a refined courtesy which, in each aspect, surpasses the stage reached by Europeans.2 Yet in my opinion it would be dangerous, if not impossible, to implant the same ideals and tendencies among Europeans, who, owing to the absence of a common historic foun'On the actual difference of ideals, see next chapter, “The Church and the Jews."

In judging of the Japanese character I have had the advantage of enjoying the friendship of my college chum, Baron Dairoku Kikuchi.