=The survival of the Jews.=--The principles the discussion of which has here been attempted had all been set down before it suddenly seemed clear that they found their warrant and application in the unexampled riddle of the persistence and success, throughout more than two thousand years and a thousand vicissitudes, of the Jewish people. It is true that we have here no exception to the apparent law that Empires are mortal, for within this period there never was a Jewish Empire: the Jews were never subject to the risk involved for racial or inherent progress by the possession of great acquired powers. But just as the fall of Empires has often _not_ been the fall of races--various races having at various times carried on the same Imperial tradition--so the persistence of the Jews, as contrasted with the impermanence of Empires, _has_ been the persistence of a race. I believe that the principles already laid down offer us an adequate explanation of this unique case: and further, that if we had begun with the case of the Jews, endeavouring, by the investigation of their case, to explain the contrasted case of other races and of all Empires hitherto, we should have arrived at the same principles. It has been asserted that that race or people decays in which selection ceases or is reversed; that in the absence of selection of the worthy for parenthood, no species, vegetable, animal or human, can prosper--much less progress. Now the Jews, the one human race of which we know assuredly that it has persisted unimpaired, have been the most continuously and stringently selected of any race, I suppose, that can be named. Every measure of persecution and repression practised against them by the people amongst whom they have lived, has directly tended towards the very end which those people least desired to compass. Other peoples found themselves prosperous through the efforts of their fathers; the struggle for existence abated; it was, so to say, as fit to be unfit as to be fit--with the inevitable result. But this has never been the case of the Jews. They have always had to struggle for life intensely: and their unexampled struggle has been a great source of their unexampled strength. The Jew who was a weakling or a fool had no chance at all; the weaklings and the fools being weeded out, intensity and strength of mind became the common heritage of this amazing people.