those who did not show the capacity for success and would only have proved a hindrance to the capable and the efficient. Illustration: DAVID GORDON SAMUEL J. FUENN _Dr._ LEON PINSKER MOSES L. LILIENBLUM PEREZ SMOLENSKIN CHAPTER XXXIX. DR. LEO PINSKER His life and experiences――His _Auto-emancipation_――The old idea of self-help in Jewish teaching――Individual and national self-help――The revival of an old doctrine――An analysis of _Auto-emancipation_――The results of Pinsker’s idea. LEO PINSKER (1821‒1891) was the son of the well-known Jewish scholar Simchah Pinsker (1801‒1864), the celebrated author of _Lekute Kadmonioth_ (Wien, 1860), an important work on the history of the Karaites, and of other valuable Hebrew works. Pinsker was educated at Odessa, where he studied law at the local Richelieu Lyceum. Law, however, was not to his liking, and he went to Moscow, where he studied medicine and took the degree of M.D. He returned to Odessa and took up practice as a medical man. Shortly afterwards the Crimean War came to an end, and Odessa was full of soldiers suffering from typhoid fever. There was danger of an epidemic. Pinsker gave up his practice and devoted himself entirely to the stricken soldiers. This self-sacrifice was not overlooked by the higher officials, who brought it to the notice of the _Czar_ Alexander II. (1818‒1881), and Pinsker received a generous reward. Pinsker, besides being an authority on medical matters, was one of the editors of the Russian-Jewish paper _Zion_. Educated as he had been in the dark days of the reign of Nicholas I. (1796‒1855), and witnessing the somewhat improved conditions brought about for the Jews by the accession of Alexander II., Pinsker believed for a time in emancipation and amalgamation; but after long years of observation and experience he came to take a different view. He was an eye-witness of the anti-Jewish riots in 1859, 1871, and 1881; and in the latter year, he issued a pamphlet in German, under the _nom de plume_ “Ein Russischer Jude,” in which he most forcibly expresses the conclusions he had arrived at. It was entitled “Auto-emancipation,” of which an English version appeared in London some ten years later.¹ Self-emancipation was Pinsker’s great idea. Not that the idea did not exist before he preached it: as a matter of fact it is as old as Judaism. But Pinsker started his career as a Jewish nationalist by giving renewed expression to this idea of self-help, and from that moment he kept it in the very forefront of his aspirations and activities. Electricity is a comparatively recent discovery; it is only within the last half-century that it has come to be fully understood and harnessed for man’s purposes. But this mysterious power is not of recent birth; although unknown to man it was latent in the universe from the beginning. In the fullness of time