It was not an easy task to gain the sympathy and the support of many “leading and wealthy Jews” for the national idea in Western Europe and America. Many who were ready to admit the truth of the Zionist conclusion were troubled by their ideas about humanity. It must be borne in mind that only in the nineteenth century did the idea of nationality reappear in its ancient form, and that as late as the end of the eighteenth century it was considered a sign of advanced culture to have triumphed over national narrow-mindedness and to desire emancipation for the whole of humanity. The Middle Ages knew nothing of nationality in our sense, and therefore a sense of nationality could not be expected of the Jews. But in the nineteenth century first hatred and then science began to recognize the nationality of the Jews. On the one hand antagonists zealously put forth new arguments to prove that the Jews were a distinct people, who had never yet been absorbed by their environment; on the other hand scientific research brought forward undeniable proofs of the physical, intellectual and moral peculiarities of the Jewish race. And just because separatism was emphasized and made use of by their enemies, some Jews considered that for the purpose of self-defence it was best to deny it: or at any rate their unjustifiable timidity and unreasonable sensitiveness prevented them from admitting it. They forgot that for centuries the furious storms of invective and calumny had been raging around their people, and that there were no malignant suspicions, no treacherous insinuations, no absurd accusations, that had not been levelled at them, whether they admitted the fact of their distinctiveness or not. Anti-Semitism raged most against those Jews who showed particularly assimilative tendencies, and aroused against them every kind of hatred and rancour, regardless of the question whether they were faithful to their past and to their ideals, or otherwise.