At first sight it might seem that the task was superfluous. Action and reaction are equal and opposite. If you have shown why A irritates B, you have also presumably shown why B irritates A. Or again, if you regard an alien minority in a community as an irritant (which it nearly always is and which it certainly is in the case of the Jews), you have, it would seem, sufficiently defined the position and need not trouble to examine what part the irritated play in the matter. What is parasitical at the worst preys upon the general body, at the best disturbs it. The general body would appear passive. It has no part in the business but to react against the cause of the disturbance and if possible get rid of it. As that cause is none of its making, one need not seek for any responsibility on its side. The house is ours: the Jew is an intruder (an objector may say), and there is an end of it. But the situation is not as simple as that. Quite apart from the fact that the Jew will certainly not allow such a description of his activity, there is the obvious truth that where you are dealing with two _human_ factors, that is, with two factors which have a common nature and therefore common duties, you are also dealing with two known and analysable organic things. You are also dealing with two sets of wills, and these wills we know to be free, in spite of sophists. A man and a group of men can do well or ill, both absolutely, and relatively to some particular question in hand; and no group of men can escape responsibility in relation to any other group with which it is in contact. It is certain that we play a part ourselves in this quarrel between us and the Jews. It is a part which is in a measure inevitable, because it proceeds in a measure from the mere contrast between two racial characters. But there is a remaining part which can be remedied by the action of the will. Though we cannot change that element which is inherent in our nature any more than the Jews can change theirs, yet an understanding of it makes all the difference; and we can certainly change those elements which are inherent in our wills. The proof of this is that in the long story of the relations between the two races, there have been, in various times and places, those exceptional chapters of calm to which I have alluded on an earlier page, and these could not have been maintained had not the causes of friction been modified on either side, but especially upon ours.