gratitude. But it is also an occasion on which we are glad to think of our sovereign as weighing and pondering the affairs of his people, and the general condition of Germany; and passing under review the most important events of the time, carefully measuring their gravity. And so our thoughts turn naturally to the most recent events, to the serious problems, which are now pressing with so loud and urgent a voice upon our attention.
Not the least of these is the Semitic question, which has been agitating Germany for some years. The parties stand sharply over against one another, and as, in the thirteenth century, the cry was "Here Guelph, there Ghibelline," so now there sounds through the German lands, "Here Semite and friend of the Semite, there anti-Semite." With no little astonishment have we perceived that the conflict rages most violently just in the principal city of the empire, and even among those belonging to the aristocracy of culture. And, although the south of Germany is thus far much less involved in the agitation than the north, the forces in motion there are not without influence in our own vicinity. In our days, science may no longer, as was formerly the case, keep aloof in self contented attitude from the great mart of life; rather has it the strongest reasons for participating, with the ripest results it has reached, in the solution of the problems of our age and nation, and for allying itself, to the end of mutual advantage, with all clarifying and quickening social forces.
So let one of the offerings presented by the Academy, on this the natal day of its royal protector, be an attempt to show how these things have come to be: how the knot, the manner of whose loosing no one is now able to indicate, has gradually twisted itself; and how History, wise guide of life that she is, holds up to the new errors that, are threatening us the warning mirror of the errors of the past.
The fortunes of the Jewish people make, perhaps, the most impressive drama in the history of the world.
The Greek tragedians dwell with predilection on the Hybris, the arrogant misuse of power, as the dark fate that draws men on to destruction. In the fortunes of this people we encounter, as it were, an Hybris made up of religious fanaticism, vulgar avarice, and instinctive race-aversion. It was the result of that moral and intellectual infirmity which, for many centuries, has affected the highest as well as the lowest classes, and which still to some degree exists in wide circles, although kept in bounds by custom, fear, and public opinion. This infirmity was and is, in a word, a lack of the sense of justice.
We know well the powers that still to-day, in every possible form, whether open or disguised, are constantly repeating this one thought: "We alone are in possession of the full and saving truth, and therefore everything must be conceded to, and everything permitted us, that is necessary or serviceable in spreading and putting forward this truth." Where this principle prevails, and it did prevail in the entire thousand
