Children imitate unconsciously. The golden rule is not natural to children: it has to be taught them. They do unto others as others have done unto them, and have no question as to right or wrong. We are all children, and have to think hard before we are conscious of any feeling of the brotherhood of man. As soon as the Jews relaxed in Amsterdam--got their breath, and felt secure--they did unto others as they had been done by--they persecuted. A Jew must be a Jew, and as they had been watched with suspicion in Spain and Portugal by the Christians, so now they watched each other for heresies. They compelled strictest obedience to every form and ceremony. To the Jew the Law forms the firmament above and the earth beneath. All is law to him, and his part and work in this life is obedience to law. The Jewish religion is a concrete, unbroken mass of laws. The Jew is bounded on the east by law; on the north by law; on the west by law; on the south by law. There are set rules and laws that govern his getting up, his going to bed, his eating, drinking, sleeping, and praying. There is no phase of human relationship that is not covered by the Mishna and Gemara. Being learned in the Law means being learned in the proper way to kill chickens, to dress ducks, wear your vestments, go to prayers, and what to say when you meet two Christians in an alley. If a Jew quarrels with a neighbor and goes to his Rabbi for advice, the learned man gets down his Talmud and finds the page. The relation of wife and husband, child and parent, brother and sister, lover and sweetheart, are covered by law, fixed, immovable. The learned men of Judah are men learned in the Law, not learned in the science of life, and commonsense. When these learned men meet they argue for six days and nights together as to interpretations of the Law concerning whether it is right to make a fire in your cook-stove on the Sabbath if a Christian is starving for food on your doorstep, or what will become of you if you eat pork to save your life. Rational Jews are those who do what they think is right, but Orthodox Jews are those who do what the Law prescribes. When Jesus plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath day, he proved himself a Rational Jew--he set his own opinion higher than Law and thereby made himself an outcast. Jewish Law provides curdling curses for just such offenses. Plato's Republic was a scheme of life regulated absolutely by law; every contingency was provided for. And Plato's plan was founded on the hypothesis that it is the duty of wise men to do the thinking and regulate the conduct of those who are supposed not to be wise enough to think and to act for themselves. But Plato's idea lacked the "Thus saith the Lord," with which Moses and Aaron enforced their edicts. So Plato's Republic is still on paper, for no set of rules minutely regulating conduct has ever been enforced except as the ruler made his subjects believe he received his instructions direct from God.