I may now touch upon the likeness of the English to the Jews, a topic discussed at length by Wagner. It cannot be doubted that of the Germanic races the English are in closest relationship with the Jews. Their orthodoxy and their devotion to the Sabbath afford a direct indication. The religion of the Englishman is always tinged with hypocrisy, and his asceticism is largely prudery. The English, like women, have been most unproductive in religion and in music; there may be irreligious poets, although not great artists, but there is no irreligious musician. So, also, the English have produced no great architects or philosophers. Berkeley, like Swift and Sterne, were Irish; Carlyle, Hamilton, and Burns were Scotch. Shakespeare and Shelley, the two greatest Englishmen, stand far from the pinnacle of humanity; they do not reach so far as Angelo and Beethoven. If we consider English philosophers we shall see that there has been a great degeneration since the Middle Ages. It began with William of Ockham and Duns Scotus; it proceeded through Roger Bacon and his namesake, the Chancellor; through Hobbes, who, mentally, was so near akin to Spinoza; through the superficial Locke to Hartley, Priestley, Bentham, the two Mills, Lewes, Huxley, and Spencer. These are the greatest names in the history of English philosophy, for Adam Smith and David Hume were Scotchmen. It must always be remembered against England, that from her there came the soulless psychology. The Englishman has impressed himself on the German as a rigorous empiricist and as a practical politician, but these two sides exhaust his importance in philosophy. There has never yet been a true philosopher who made empiricism his basis, and no Englishman has got beyond empiricism without external help. None the less, the Englishman must not be confused with the Jew. There is more of the transcendental element in him, and his mind is directed rather from the transcendental to the practical, than from the practical towards the transcendental. Otherwise he would not be so readily disposed to humour, unlike the Jew, who is ready to be witty only at his own expense or on sexual things. I am well aware how difficult are the problems of laughter and humour--just as difficult as any problems that are peculiar to man and not shared by him with the beasts; so difficult that neither Schopenhauer nor Jean Paul himself were able to elucidate them. Humour has many aspects; in some men it seems to be an expression of pity for themselves or for others, but this element is not sufficient to distinguish it.