willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, has been
trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more physically
powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, or
persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the wheel of
life, come uppermost. The Egyptian task-master and warrior have passed;
what the Babylonian was we know no more, save for a few mud tablets and
rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the once captive Jew
we see today in every city and every street; until at last, the descendants
of those men who spat when they spoke his name, and forcibly drew his teeth
to extract his money from him, wait patiently behind each other for
admission to his offices and palaces; while nobles solicit his daughters in
marriage and kings are proud to be summoned to his table in hope of golden
crumbs, and great questions of peace and war are often held balanced in the
hand of one little asthmatic Jew. After long ages of disgrace and
pariahism, the time has come, whether for good or for evil, when just those
qualities which the Jew possesses and which subtilely distinguish him from
others, are in demand; while those he has not are sinking into disuse;
exactly that domination of the reflective faculties over the combative,
which once made him slave, also saved him from becoming extinct in wars;
and the intellectual quickness, the far-sighted keenness, the persistent
mental activity and self-control, which could not in those ages save him
from degradation or compensate for his lack of bone and muscle and
combative instinct, are the very qualities the modern world demands and
crowns. The day of Goliath with his club and his oaths is fast passing,
and the day of David with his harp and skilfully constructed sling is
coming near and yet nearer.

The qualities which give an animal, a race, or an individual, a higher
utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in the
environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was lowest