Again:—­“It is very strange how most men will do anything to evade responsibility.”  Later, we were talking of the contrast between Hellene and Hebrew.  “The real chosen people,” he said, “were the Greeks.  One of the most remarkable things about them is not only the smallness but the late rise of Attica, whereas Magna Graecia 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 pro-consul.

“The most remarkable achievement of the Jew was to impose on Europe for eighteen centuries his own superstitions—­his ideas of the supernatural.  Jahveh was no more than Zeus or Milcom; yet the Jew got established the belief in the inspiration of his Bible and his law.  If I were a Jew, I should have the same contempt as he has for the Christian who acted in this way towards me, who took my ideas and scorned me for clinging to them.”

Here may be quoted a passage from a letter to Professor George Romanes:—­

I have a great respect for the Nazarenism of Jesus—­very little for later “Christianity.”  But the only religion that appeals to me is prophetic Judaism.  Add to it something from the best Stoics and something from Spinoza and something from Goethe, and there is a religion for men.  Some of these days I think I will make a cento out of the works of these people.

This cento, however, he never made.  Had he done so, he would assuredly have illustrated his saying to Charles Kingsley:—­

    My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves
    to fact; not to try and make facts harmonize with my
    aspirations—­

a notion expanded thus:—­

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God.  Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every pre-conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.  I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I resolved at all costs to do this.

PRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET ST., LONDON, E.C.4.