nated from the Greeks." In all the world there is no man more stubbornly conservative than the talmudic Jew; and the new light that shot in a thousand prismatic rays of verse and prose from the " burning and far-shining spirit of Voltaire" penetrated with the utmost difficulty the chinks in the walls of Ghetto and Judengasse. Well may Jewish rabbis, viewing with Jewish rabbis, viewing with sorrow the sceptical tendencies of their dispersed flock, hurl back at the Gentile the charge of having secularized or "paganized" modern society, and say to him, as Nathan said unto David, "Thou art the man." The reply which the Russian novelist has placed upon the lips of the accused Lithuanian Jew may well be sadly repeated by many of the latter's co-religionists, in the West as well as in the East:

"Our children have no longer our beliefs; they do not say our prayers, nor have they your beliefs; no more do they say your prayers; they do not pray at all, and they believe in nothing."

Neither the distinctive merits, then, of modern civilization, nor the defects of those merits, are of Jewish origin. Let us not reverse the roles of Jew and Gentile.

"Despite the statements of certain Semites, or certain Antisemites- both tending equally to exaggerate the importance of Israel—it is not the Jew who has emancipated Christian thought, but Christian thought, or, if you prefer, Aryan thought, that has emancipated the Jew... Scepticism, nihilism, materialism, so far from being Jewish products, are, in the Jews infected by them, but a sign and a consequence of the closer union of races; they bear witness to the contact of the Jew with ourselves."

Then there is the National Grievance. Not content with de-christianizing his neighbors, the Jew, it seems, threatens to de-nationalize them; and this, in our century, when national feeling counts for so much, is an unpardonable sin. In an evil hour for the sons of Abraham, there was discerned, at the bottom of the Jew, the Semite the natural antagonist of the Aryan, the blood-foe of that precious deutsche Kultur complacently held by the naïve philosophy of history of an ultra-Teutonic school to be the nurse and mother of modern civilization. This profound discovery made, and a weak point in the lines of the liberal attack presenting itself, the signal for a new Judenhetze was sounded summoning the defenders of Germanenthum to make front against Judenthum. The slogan sounded in Germany soon found, as we have seen, an echo beyond her borders; and once more the ominous cry "Hep! Hep!" or its modern euphemism, warned the startled Jew of his old fatal status as a stranger the root of every charge brought against him since the

Babylonian captivity. Antisemitism decks itself and hides its vulgar origin with the specious theory of a pinchbeck social philosophy; and at the heart of this philosophy one detects the old tribal notion that identifies nationality with

race.

It is urged that "since every nation is founded on unity of race, and since the Jews are a separate race, they can never belong to any nation." Confronted at this primitive stage of his argument with the fact that not a single modern nation, not even Germany, can justly lay claim to unmixed blood, to a national basis of race-unity, the Antisemitic philosopher widens his concept, and urges that, after all, these superficially diverse ethnic elements constituting modern nations are really homogeneous elements, rays diverging from a common centre, branches of the noble Aryan oak. But is it true that none but Aryan elements have entered into the composition of modern nations? What of the underlying strata of European pre-historic races of Cro-Magnon or of Neanderthal — which must have been simply covered over, and not obliterated, by IndoEuropean deposits?

Nothing warrants the belief that we are all Aryans; the Frenchman or the German who prides himself on his pure Indo-Germanic blood, may have descended from the cave-dwellers. In fact the existence of an Aryan race' at the present time is perhaps as purely imaginary as the existence of a Latin race."

Again, what becomes of this notion of a sharp and antagonistic confrontation of Jew and Aryan upon which Antisemitic theory depends, when we consider that, while it is certain that alien blood, pagan or Christian, flows freely in Jewish veins, it is also certain that Christian nations have, on their side, a marked strain of Jewish blood? Shem and Japhet, supposed to be incapable of blending, have already blended. There is probably not a single modern nation that is quite free from admixture with the Semite; while some of them, like Spain and Portugal, have absorbed so much Jewish blood that they have become completely impregnated with it." Germany is not exempt; and an ironical destiny may have so ordered it that the Teutonic current in the veins of indignant Pastor Stoecker himself is faintly perfumed with the foetor Judaicus.

66

"Israel has been like an island whose borders, swept by the waves, have crumbled piecemeal into the ocean, until more than once it seemed threatened with complete submersion. Of all the descendants of Jacob, only a small part, perhaps even only an infinitesimal minority, has remained faithful to the religion of its fathers. The great majority of the twelve tribes have accepted

We cannot here follow further M. LeroyBeaulieu's elaborate argument, nor even glance at his interesting chapters on the Physiology, the Psychology, and the Genius of the modern Jew. His views are by no means always flattering to the latter; but they are always broad, well-considered, and based on the freest and fullest scrutiny of facts. One point upon which he constantly insists, and which may be perhaps taken as the key-note of his eloquent plea for a humaner view of the Jewish Question, is the truth that the Jew of to-day-that is, the Jew of the marked type generally objected to

is what he is largely because of the life we have so long forced him to lead. The virtues which we accuse him of lacking could scarcely have blossomed under the rod of persecution. If he is the child of the Talmud, he is none the less the child of the Ghetto; and it is to the latter parent that most of his objectionable traits may be traced. Antisemitism has little chance even of a hearing in this country, as recent events have proved-we trust to the satisfaction of Herren Stoecker and Ahlwardt. To us, we believe it is no idle boast to say, the most "philosophical" Antisemite is simply a Jew-baiter with a doctrine; and the only part of that doctrine with which we need concern ourselves is refuted by our daily experience of our Hebrew fellow-citizens.

E. G. J.

THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES.*

Dr. Rashdall has written a good book on a great subject. The origin, growth, constitution and government, the ideals and studies, students and teachers, relations and influence, of the universities of the middle ages, are themes that can never lose their interest for educated men. With beginnings so obscure that they are likely to remain a subject of controversy, growing up in ways that often defy the most learned and acute minds to explain them, encountering all sorts of difficulties and dangers both within and without, and marked by the characteristic facts of their time and

*THE UNIVERSITIES OF EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. By Hastings Rashdall, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer of Hertford College, Oxford. In two volumes. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. Macmillan & Co., New York.

country, these institutions at once so far met the higher needs of men for the present, and so far adapted themselves to changing conditions, that they attained to the greatest usefulness and influence in mediæval times, and continued into the modern era. In his very first paragraph, Dr. Rashdall shows that he grasps the dignity of his theme.

"Sacerdotium, Imperium, Studium are brought together by a medieval writer as the three mysterious powers, or virtues,' by whose harmonious cooperation the life and

health of Christendom are sustained. This Studium' did not to him, any more than the Sacerdotium' or the 'Imperium' with which it is associated, represent a mere abstraction. As all priestly power had its visible head and source in the city of the Seven Hills, as all secular authority was ultimately held of the Holy Roman Empire, so could all the streams of knowledge by which the Universal Church was watered and fertilized be ultimately traced as to their fountain-head to the great universities, especially to the University of Paris. The history of an institution which held such a place in the imagination of a mediæval historian, is no mere subject of antiquarian curiosity; its origin, its development, its decay, or rather the transition to its modern form, are worthy of the same serious investigation which has been abundantly bestowed upon the Papacy and the Empire."

In his preface the author briefly refers to the origin and growth of his book, describes his ideal or plan, and indicates the sources of his materials and the extent of his obligations to others. Like many other works of English scholarship, this book originated in a university prize essay, which was won in 1883. At first the author intended nothing more than such a revision and expansion of the essay as would justify its publication in book-form; but he continued his labors until twelve years were gone, and his essay had been expanded into 1400 octavo pages. His plan is "to describe with tolerable fulness the three great archetypal universities Bologna, Paris, Oxford-and to give short notices of the foundation, constitution, and history of the others arranged in national groups." Even of the three great universities, he does not profess to have written a history. Referring to the others, he says:

"The condensed treatment of seventy-three universities in 316 pages has of course rendered that part of my work of little interest, except for purposes of reference; but to have ignored all but the most famous Studia would have left the reader with a very inadequate impression of the extent and variety of the medieval university system, and of the importance of the part which it played in the making of civilized Europe. Moreover, it would have been impossible to write satisfactorily the history of even one university without an acquaintance with the documents of all the rest. The great defect of university histories has been the nonapplication of the comparative method. As matters

stand, even students will probably skip the greater part of Vol. II., part i. The general reader will perhaps find most that will interest him in Vol. II., part ii.” Volume I. opens with a discussion of the question, What is a University? This is followed by a longer chapter on Abelard and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Then come a few pages devoted to Salerno, which in university history is little more than a great name. An extended chapter of 180 pages is devoted to Bologna, and Paris fills out the volume. The universities of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Bohemia, and the Low Countries, of Poland, Hungary, Denmark, and Sweden, and of Scotland, comprise the 316 pages described by the author in the quotation given above. Volume II., part ii., is devoted principally to Oxford, but it contains also an account of Cambridge, and two other chapters of a general character. For Dr. Rashdall's sources, we can only refer the reader to his preface and numerous bibliographies and notes, adding merely the remark that he must have spent his twelve years industriously to have explored so much material.

The reader who is not already familiar with the main facts stated in the first chapter will find it necessary to make them at once his sure possession. The notion that a university means a school in which all branches of knowledge are taught "has long since disappeared from the pages of professed historians." "A glance into any collection of mediæval documents reveals the fact that the word university' means merely a number, a plurality, an aggregate of persons." In the earliest period in which the word is used in a special sense, "the phrase is always university of scholars,' university of masters and scholars,'' university of study,' or the like."

6

"It is particularly important to notice that the term was generally in the middle ages used distinctly of the scholastic body, whether of teachers or scholars, not of the place in which such a body was established, or even of its collective schools. The word used to denote the academic institution in the abstract-the schools or the towns which held them-was Studium, rather than Universitas. . . . The term which most nearly corresponds to the vague and indefinite English notion of a university, so distinguished from a mere school, seminary, or private educational establishment, is not Universitas but Studium Generale; and Studium Generale means, not a place where all subjects are studied, but a place where students from all parts are received. Studium Generale became common at the beginning of the 13th century, when it was used as vaguely and indefinitely as the English term Public School or the German HochSchule."

"(1) That the school attracted, or at least invited, students from all parts, not merely those of a particular country or district; (2) That it was a place of higher education, that is to say, that one at least of the higher faculties, theology, law, medicine, was taught there; (3) That such subjects were taught by a considerable number, at least by a plurality, of masters." How the meaning of the name fluctuated, how, progressively, it became more definite, and how, finally, it disappeared, giving place to university, it would take too much space to tell even

in the fewest words.

Most persons who read books of this class, if not indeed all of them, will find themselves constantly falling upon surprises. Dr. Rashdall himself has found a closer acquaintance with the facts resulting in "a certain disillusionment." "We have often had occasion to notice," he remarks in his epilogue, "that features of the medieval university system which have constantly been appealed to as binding precedents were really less universal and less invariable than has been supposed." The following extract shows what he means, and also teaches us to beware of pushing generalizations too far:

"The University of London, after being empowered by Royal Charter to do all things that could be done by any University, was legally advised that it could not grant degrees to women without a fresh charter, because no university had ever granted such degrees; we have seen that there were women-doctors at Salerno. We have been told that the medieval university gave a religious education; we have seen that to the majority of students it gave none. We have been told that a university must embrace all faculties; we have seen that many very famous medieval universities did nothing of the kind. That it eventually came to be considered necessary, or at least usual, that they should do so, is due to the eventual predominance of the Parisian type of university

organization, minus the very peculiar and exceptional

absence of a Faculty of Civil Law. We have been told that the collegiate system is peculiar to England; we have seen that Colleges were found in nearly all universities, and that over a great part of Europe university teaching was more or less superseded by college teaching before the close of the medieval period. We have been told that the great business of a university was considered to be liberal as distinct from professional education; we have seen that many universities were almost exclusively occupied with professional education. We have been assured, on the other hand, that the course in arts was looked upon as a mere preparatory discipline for the higher faculties; we have seen that in the universities of Northern Europe a majority of students never entered a higher faculty at all.”

Different readers will find different parts of the book most instructive and interesting. We have taken a special interest in the chapters and sections of a more general character. "The Place of the University [of Paris] in European

Studies of Paris," "The Place of Oxford in Mediæval Thought," "Student Life in the Middle Ages," are titles that illustrate what we

mean.

In a short chapter entitled "The Numbers in the Medieval Universities," Dr. Rashdall attacks the traditions that assign thirty thousand students to Oxford, and corresponding numbers to Paris and Bologna, when those universities were at the summit of their greatness. Valuable data for such a purpose are far from abundant; inference must largely take the place of registration lists; but we can see no good reason to dispute the general soundness of his conclusions, which will be presented in his own words.

"(1) It is improbable that the numbers of either Bologna or Paris can ever have exceeded some 6000 or 7000. At Paris at least it is pretty certain that this limit was approached during its period of highest repute — say, the beginning of the fourteenth century. (If all the grammar-boys of the city were added, we should possibly have to add some 2000 more.) About the middle of the fifteenth century, however, the number at that university was probably nearer 3000. In Italy the growth of new universities was so rapid and extensive,

and the decline in the reputation of Bologna so serious, that neither Bologna nor any one of its rivals can ever have approached the numbers of Paris after an early period of the thirteenth century.

"(2) The maximum number at Oxford was something between 1500 and 3000. By about 1438 the numbers had fallen to under 1000.

"(3) The numbers of Prague before the German migration in 1409 may have been 3000 or more; Vienna and Leipsic may at one time have had 1000 or 2000. The numbers of the other German universities during the fifteenth century varied between 100 and 1000, including grammarians.

"(4) We may add that the population of other minor universities in France and elsewhere, wherever ascertainable, is always numbered by hundreds and not by thousands; at Toulouse alone there may have been as many as 2000."

The most serious defect of Dr. Rashdall's book is the omission at the close of a summary view of the whole field. No doubt such a chapter would have been a peculiarly difficult one to write. Still, it would have given a unity and completeness to the work that it now lacks, and should have been written. But even as it is, the work is incomparably the most valuable one dealing with the subject in our language, and will at once take its place in libraries, public and private, as a recognized authority.

B. A. HINSDALE.

THE publisher of "The Art Student" has acquired "The Limner," and the two titles will hereafter be included in the "style" of this useful monthly.

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF

ELECTRICITY.*

The demand for popular scientific literature having to do with electricity and magnetism has of late been prodigious. A great deal has been written to gratify a love for the mysterious and sensational, or, on the other hand, to supply a little information that might immediately be turned to practical purposes. Much of this popular writing has been indifferent and of but slight value to general readers. The technical literature of the subject has been too severely

scientific and mathematical either to interest or profit any except specialists. Electricity in its manifold applications is the dominant scientific feature of the age; and yet to the large body of thoughtful readers the subject is one shrouded with an air of mystery, because so little understood. The great magazines and periodicals, with rare exceptions, seem to avoid the subject, not, probably, from lack of interest, but rather on account of inseparable technicalities. This difficulty is oftener fancied than real, for there is much connected with electricity which is suggestive and filled with absorbing interest. The subject only requires humanizing to arouse a more intelligent interest in its historical development as a preparation for understanding its existing applications. This, Dr. Park Benjamin's book on "The Intellectual Rise in Electricity" is eminently fitted to do. It is a book that will prove a most welcome addition to the library of every thoughtful reader.

This book marks the beginning of a new epoch in the literature of electricity, and shows that the science has far transcended the supposed period of its infancy; for to the extent the literature of any science becomes philosophical, it approaches the perfection of its development. The layman can scarcely appreciate the narrowness of the electrical profession. The marvellous development of the applications of electricity has scarcely permitted time for philosophical thought to be directed toward either its history or its broader relations. No science has ever been so exacting, or had so little to do with the strictly material. Devotion to it has meant absorption with mere technical details. The writer who has presumed to transcend petty technicalities, and to introduce general conceptions or philosophical allusions, has been called irrelevant, unpractical, and out of touch with the times. The purely intellectual

*THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. By Park Benjamin, Ph.D., LL.B. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

possibilities of the subject have scarcely been dreamed of or imagined, and few have possessed the courage to attempt to utter them. But all this bids fair to be changed, and the "Intellectual Rise of Electricity " to receive a new impulse. What is urgently needed is that laymen acquire such a knowledge of electricity as will make its history, the general scientific elements underlying the science, living realities; that its devotees rise to broader appreciation of literature, history, and philosophy.

"From the inception of the study of natural phenomena, the human mind has pursued its development along two well-defined lines. At first a phenomenon is a mere matter of observation, of sensation; then, as its

perception strengthens, the attempt is made to turn the occurrence to some practical application, without seeking to incorporate it into a generalization. This may be called the pre-scientific attitude. The true scientific spirit develops when the mind passes from mere observation to classification, and then on to the higher realm of search for causes, for laws. It was when the lightnings burst from the clouds and the thunders shook the earth that the human mind was awed before the mysterious and uncomprehended powers of nature. In the childhood age of the race, the mind saw in such events only the manifestation of the terrible powers of supernatural beings, which the superstitious revered as gods to be appeased with sacrifices and placated with

prayers."*

The task Dr. Benjamin has addressed himself to is to entangle the mingled threads of fact and fancy, of mythology and history, and reveal the birth of the electrical idea, its growth, and tell how later on it blossomed and bore rare scientific results. Nor has the author placed a false estimate on the value of his subject, when, in the Introduction, he says:

"The intellectual rise in electricity is worthy of historical investigation, not merely because of the material results, actual and potential, which have come from it, but because it shows clearly anew the marvellous power of the human mind as an instrument of discovery, capable of correcting its own errors. Beginning with a single phenomenon, afterwards including effects, all for long periods seemingly fortuitous and uncorrelated, this rise has involved questions of an interest second only to that which mankind has yielded to the great issues of life and eternity; questions which challenged the human understanding and compelled it to measure itself against them.”

The story of the amber and the magnetic stone is often repeated in classic lore, and is so interwoven with early thought that the history of development from these simple facts to the dynamo, the telegraph, and the trolley of today, involves very largely the various stages of progress of intellectual growth in general. So the author defines the spirit in which he wrote, when he says:

Albrecht, Geschichte der Elektricität.

"In this research I have felt that it is not so much the trials and discoveries made in the great and new field of Nature which attract us, instructive and useful, even momentous, as they are, not these so much as the breathing human beings, who in the far past saw them and deciphered them in the light of those other days, and of whose light they formed a part; who thought of them, and whose thoughts lived on, and became immor

tal, and moved downward through generation after gen

eration, to us; even as our thoughts, joining theirs, will pass through the ages to the generations yet to come."

Electricity as a science is fully matured, and is in no sense in its infancy, except that the extent of its possible applications is just becoming realized. Its essential definition, full of poetic fancy at first, has now become as clearly defined as our notions of gravity and of the nature and constitution of matter. We speak of electricity to-day as an ether-stress, an expression full of meaning to those who have thought far enough to grasp its significance. But what a progress from the conception of an "amber soul" to "ether-stress"! Yet in the interval of time which marks this progress, all the intellectual and political history of the human race can be written. Instead of being in its infancy, electricity is really the oldest of sciences, since possibly the first recorded experiment in natural science was the electrification of a bit of amber. The word electricity comes from the Greek names applied to amber, and the significance of this term is singularly appropriate. To the poetic fancy of the Greek, the amber-gold, elector, was an embodied sunbeam. From the amber the name passed to a property possessed by it that of attracting light bodies; and now, by a most singular coincidence, the imprisoned sunbeam energy of coal is released to furnish the brilliant arc light, and we still name the agent electricity.

The earliest mention of the electrical property of amber is mostly legendary, and whether the property was first discovered by genius or accident may never be definitely known. Yet it is especially interesting, in these latter days, when women are struggling for fuller recognition, to learn that in all probability the discovery of electricity was due to a woman. Thracian women used amber spindles when spinning thread, and these were called " clutchers," because dust and light substances were attracted by them after having been rubbed against the garments.

The

The lodestone, or natural magnet, has an equally interesting history, and a no less obscure origin of discovery. The simple phenomena of the magnet and amber were doubly