In our own time we have seen, quite lately, the succession of the second to the first of these stages; we have passed from welcome to ill-ease. That passage threatens a further passage from the second to the third; from the third to the terrible conclusion. We feel quite secure to-day from the last extreme of this cycle. We are certain it will never come to persecution: that is still inconceivable. But it is not inconceivable everywhere: and no society is free from change. Some now alive may live to see riots even in this quiet polity and worse in newer or less settled states. Such a catastrophe is to be avoided by every effort in our power and a solution to the problem presented must imperatively be sought. But in passing we should note, for the consideration of those who may doubt the acuteness of the problem and the immediate practical necessity for a solution, the presence of a phenomenon which amply proves that it _is_ acute and that the solution _is_ necessary. That phenomenon is the presence to-day of a new type, the Anti-Semite, the man to whom all the Jews are abhorrent. It is a phenomenon which has increased prodigiously; its rate of increase is accelerating, and as a warning of the peril, as a proof of its magnitude, I propose to examine that phenomenon closely in my next chapter. THE ANTI-SEMITE CHAPTER VII THE ANTI-SEMITE To understand any problem one must study not only its real factors as they appear to a reasonable man who sees the whole affair steadily; one must also understand the insanities and distortions the problem has provoked, for they singularly illustrate its character and force. It is not enough to consider only the actual in any difficulty to be solved, it is necessary also to consider the imaginary; because the legend or illusion is a direct product of the truth and shows how the truth has acted on other minds. Thus a caricature brings out what we unconsciously know to be present in any personality, emphasizes it, and though false in its exaggeration, forbids us to forget it in the future. Thus any extreme, no matter how false its lack of proportion, is of the highest value to judgment. In a practical problem of politics there is another most weighty reason for examining extreme and distorted opinion: which is, that in politics we deal not only with real things but with the liking or disliking of these things by living men: their exaggerated or ill-informed affection or repulsion. All statesmanship lies in the apprehension of enthusiasm and indifference. Now there are in this great political problem presented by the Jewish race in our midst two extremes. One we have already studied: it is the extreme folly of falsehood, of pretending that the problem is not there.