Since the abolition of religious obstacles the Jews have taken an even more prominent part in the development of the European mind under all its aspects. Israel wasted no time in turning to excellent account the bitterly earned lessons of experience. The persecution of ages had weeded the race of weaklings. None survived but the fittest. These, strong with the strength of long suffering, confident with the confidence which springs from the consciousness of trials nobly endured and triumphs won against incredible odds, versatile by virtue of their struggle for existence amid so many and so varied forms of civilisation, and stimulated by the modern enthusiasm for progress, were predestined to success. The Western Jews, after a training of eighteen hundred years in the best of schools--the school of adversity--came forth fully equipped with endowments, moral and intellectual, which enabled them, as soon as the chance offered, to conquer a foremost place among the foremost peoples of the world. Science and art, literature, statesmanship, philosophy, law, medicine, and music, all owe to the Jewish intellect a debt impossible to exaggerate. In Germany there is hardly a university not boasting a professor Hebrew in origin, if not always in religion. Economic thought and economic practice owe their most daring achievements to Jewish speculation. Socialism--this latest effort of political philosophy to reconcile the conflicting interests of society and its constituent members--is largely the product of the Jewish genius. It would be hard to enumerate individuals, for their name is legion.[153] But a few will suffice: Lasalle and Karl Marx in economics, Lasker in politics, Heine and Auerbach in literature, Mendelssohn, Rubenstein and Joachim in music, Jacoby in mathematics, Traube in medicine; in psychology Lazarus and Steinthal, in classical scholarship and comparative philology Benfey and Barnays are some Jewish workers who have made themselves illustrious. Not only the purse but the press of Europe is to a great extent in Jewish hands. The people who control the sinews of war have contributed more than their share to the arts and sciences which support and embellish peace. And all this in the course of one brief half-century, and in the face of the most adverse influences of legislation, of religious feeling and of social repugnance. History can show no parallel to so glorious a revolution. Mythology supplies a picture which aptly symbolises it. Hesiod was not a prophet, yet no prophecy has ever received a more accurate fulfilment than the poetic conception couched in the following lines received in the Hebrew Palingenesia: “Chaos begat Erebos and black Night; But from Night issued Air and Day.” CHAPTER XXI IN RUSSIA