'As a philosophic critic who sympathizes with all Parties,' he said, 'allow me to tell you, friend Witsky, that your programme needs unification: it starts as economic, and then becomes dualistic--first inductive, then deductive.' '_Moj Panie drogi_ (my dear sir),' intervened David, 'if you sympathize with all Parties, you will join a corps for the defence of them all.' 'You forget the philosophic critic equally disagrees with all Parties.' David lost his temper at last. 'Gentlemen,' he shouted ironically, 'one may sit and make smoke-rings till the Messiah comes, but I assure you there is only one unconditional historic necessity, and that is _Samooborona_.' And without drinking his tea--which, indeed, the Resurrectionist had forgotten to order--he dashed into the street. X He was but a youth, driven into action by hellish injustice. He had hitherto taken scant notice of all these Parties that had sprung up for the confusion of his people--these hybrid, kaleidoscopic combinations of Russian and Jewish politics--but as he fled from the philosophers through the now darkening streets, his every nerve quivering, it seemed to him as if the alphabet had only to be thrown about like dice to give always the name of some Party or other. He had a nightmare vision of bristling sects and pullulating factions, each with its Councils, Federations, Funds, Conferences, Party-Days, Agenda, Referats, Press-Organs, each differentiating itself with meticulous subtlety from all the other Parties, each defining with casuistic minuteness its relation to every contemporary problem, each equipped with inexhaustible polyglot orators speechifying through tumultuous nights. Well, it could not be helped. In the terrible nebulous welter in which his people found themselves, it was not unnatural that each man should grope towards his separate ray of light. The Russian, too, was equally bewildered, and perhaps all this profusion of theories came in both from the same lack of tangibilities. Both peoples possessed nothing. Perhaps, indeed, the ultimate salvation of the Jews lay in identifying themselves with Russia. But then, who could tell that the patriots who welcomed them to-day as co-workers would not reject them when the cause was won? Perhaps there was no hope outside preserving their own fullest identity. Poor bewildered Russian Jew, caught in the bewilderments both of the Russian and the Jew, and tangled up inextricably in the double confusion of interlacing coils!