In most other parts of Europe, even at that late age, the relation between the Jew and the non-Jew was far from satisfactory. What made the quarrel between the two races so hopeless was the fact that both sides were equally right and equally wrong and that both sides could justly claim to be the victim of their opponent’s intolerance and prejudice. In the light of the theory put forward in this book that intolerance is merely a form of self-protection of the mob, it becomes clear that as long as they were faithful to their own respective religions, the Christian and the Jew must have conceded each other as enemies. In the first place, they both of them maintained that their God was the only true God and that all the other Gods of all the other nations were false. In the second place, they were each other’s most dangerous commercial rival. The Jews had come to western Europe as they had originally come to Palestine, as immigrants in search of a new home. The labor unions of that day, the Guilds, had made it impossible for them to take up a trade. They had therefore been obliged to content themselves with such economic makeshifts as pawnbroking and banking. In the Middle Ages these two professions, which closely resembled each other, were not thought fit occupations for decent citizens. Why the Church, until the days of Calvin, should have felt such a repugnance towards money (except in the form of taxes) and should have regarded the taking of interest as a crime, is hard to understand. Usury, of course, was something no government could tolerate and already the Babylonians, some forty centuries before, had passed drastic laws against the money changers who tried to make a profit out of other people’s money. In several chapters of the Old Testament, written two thousand years later, we read how Moses too had expressly forbidden his followers to lend money at exorbitant rates of interest to any one except foreigners. Still later, the great Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato, had given expression to their great disapproval of money that was born of other money. The Church fathers had been even more explicit upon this subject. All during the Middle Ages the money lenders were held in profound contempt. Dante even provided a special little alcove in his Hell for the exclusive benefit of his banker friends. Theoretically perhaps it could be proved that the pawnbroker and his colleague, the man behind the “banco,” were undesirable citizens and that the world would be better off without them. At the same time, as soon as the world had ceased to be entirely agricultural, it was found to be quite impossible to transact even the simplest business operations without the use of credit. The money lender therefore had become a necessary evil and the Jew, who (according to the views of the Christians) was doomed to eternal damnation any way, was urged to occupy himself with a trade which was necessary but which no respectable man would touch.