Fifteen years ago there appeared for the first time an idea that afterwards occasioned endless expenditure of ink. “In Palestine,” I wrote, “we can and should found for ourselves a _spiritual centre of our nationality_.” My literary experience was not yet extensive, and I overlooked this important consideration: that in putting before the public an idea which does not accord with the general view, one must not merely put it in a logically clear and definite form, but must also reckon with the psychology of the reader—with that mental apparatus which combines unrelated words and ideas according to the requirements of its owner—and must try one’s utmost to avoid any word or expression which might afford an opening for this process of combination. I confess now that in view of this psychological factor I ought to have felt that the formula “a spiritual centre of our nationality” would afford a good opportunity to those who wished to misunderstand, although from the point of view of logic it is sufficiently clear and is well adapted to the idea which it contains. “Centre” is, of course, a relative term. Just as “father” is inconceivable without children, so is “centre” inconceivable without “circumference”; and just as a father is a father only in relation to his children, and is merely So-and-so in relation to the rest of mankind, so a centre is a centre only in relation to its own circumference, whereas in relation to all that lies outside the circumference it is merely a point with no special importance. When we use the word “centre,” metaphorically, in connection with the phenomena of human society, it necessarily connotes a similar idea: what we mean is that a particular spot or thing exerts influence on a certain social circumference, which is bound up with and dependent on it, and that in relation to this circumference it is a centre. But since social life is a complex of many different departments, there are very few centres which are universal in their function—that is, which influence equally all sides of the life of the circumference. The relation between the centre and the circumference is usually limited to one or more departments of life, outside which they are not interdependent. Thus a given circumference may have many centres, each of which is a centre only for one specific purpose. When, therefore, the word “centre” is used to express a social conception, it is accompanied almost always—except where the context makes it unnecessary—by an epithet which indicates its character. We speak of a literary centre, an artistic centre, a commercial centre, and so on, meaning thereby that in this or that department of life the centre in question has a circumference which is under its influence and is dependent on it, but that in other departments the one does not exert nor the other receive influence, and the relation of centre and circumference does not exist.