[7] As examples and a proof of the strong humanitarian influence Jewish history exercises upon Christians, I would point to the relation established between the Jews and two celebrities of the nineteenth century, Schleiden and George Eliot. In his old age, the great scientist and thinker accidentally, in the course of his study of sources for the history of botany, became acquainted with medieval Jewish history. It filled him with ardent enthusiasm for the Jews, for their intellectual strength, their patience under martyrdom. Dominated by this feeling, he wrote the two admirable sketches: _Die Bedeutung der Juden für Erhaltung und Wiederbelebung der Wissenschaften im Mittelalter_ (1876) and _Die Romantik des Martyriums bei den Juden im Mittelalter_ (1878). According to his own confession, the impulse to write them was "the wish to take at least the first step toward making partial amends for the unspeakable wrong inflicted by Christians upon Jews." As for George Eliot, it may not be generally known that it was her reading of histories of the Jews that inspired her with the profound veneration for the Jewish people to which she gave glowing utterance in "Daniel Deronda." (She cites Zunz, was personally acquainted with Emanuel Deutsch, and carried on a correspondence with Professor Dr. David Kaufmann. See _George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and Journals_. Arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross, Vol. iii, ed. Harper and Brothers.) Her enthusiasm prompted her, in 1879, to indite her passionate apology for the Jews, under the title, "The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!" [8] Pushkin. When, in days to come, the curtain rises upon the touching tragedy of Jewish history, revealing it to the astonished eye of a modern generation, then, perhaps, hearts will be attuned to tenderness, and on the ruins of national hostility will be enthroned mutual love, growing out of mutual understanding and mutual esteem. And who can tell--perhaps Jewish history will have a not inconsiderable share in the spiritual change that is to annihilate national intolerance, the modern substitute for the religious bigotry of the middle ages. In this case, the future task of Jewish history will prove as sublime as was the mission of the Jewish people in the past. The latter consisted in the spread of the dogma of the unity of creation; the former will contribute indirectly to the realization of the not yet accepted dogma of the unity of the human race. IV THE HISTORICAL SYNTHESIS