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The main problem of the Highlands is by no means an easy one; no one will suggest that, as a whole, either the soil or the climate is favourable to tillage. Yet there are districts-larger than many people suspectwhere tillage may be developed. Nor can it be suggested that the problems of communications in a district so broken, so hilly, and so sparsely populated, admit of simple solutions. On the other hand, for forestry the conditions over a large area are favourable; the resources of power are enormous, and, properly developed, might become a great national asset; finally, it is possible to suggest that in certain districts, where carefully considered schemes embodying more than one of these developments may be instituted, there is a better prospect than can be found elsewhere of obtaining a remedy for the housing and social problems with which we are confronted. The value of land is not high; the vested interests are less formidable than elsewhere; the surroundings are superb; the excessive burden of local rates is the one obstacle to progress along these lines. But this is a difficulty which it should not be impossible to overcome; and, if it be the fate of the Highlands to provide a remedy for the mistakes and misfortunes that have given so bad a name to the great industrial centres and filled them with social problems and human misery, those who love the Highlands will waste no time in regrets and recriminations for past neglect, but will look to a future which will more than compensate for the past.

J. R. MORETON MACDONALD.

Art. 10.-THE JEWS AS A REVOLUTIONARY LEAVEN. ALEXANDER HERCEN, the forerunner of the Russian revolution, characterised the position of an educated Russian towards Europe and his own country as of one standing 'on the other shore,' and in this manner being the most independent man in the world. Taking no part in the historical life of Europe and unconnected with it by tradition, he looks on it from the other shore, sees its failings more clearly, shares its doubts without being warmed by its faith. Hercen himself, having taken his stand on the other shore, submitted the political and social ideas of the West to merciless criticism, and prophesied the impending disappearance of Western culture. Meanwhile Bakunin, expecting that after destruction would come the dawn of the golden age, set out to destroy the accumulated treasure of the centuries. We may doubt whether Hercen and other Russian revolutionists were right in assuming that they looked at Europe from the other shore. But the able and active Jews whom Hercen followed and those whom he in turn inspired, aliens not only to Western Europe but to Byzantine culture and bitter foes of Christianity, may make such a claim. These men have more right than the Russians to say that 'spiritually they are the most independent people in the world'; for the Jews are the most radical nation in all departments of life, and their radicalism frequently verges on nihilism.

Among Hercen's contemporaries was another Jewish writer, Heine, who cultivated the same philosophy and often arrived at the same conclusions. Hercen did not write verses, but his soul was poetical. His novel, 'Who is guilty?' is full of lyrical sentiment, and he gave to his writings-although their contents were often not poetical at all-a form which places him on the boundary between science and art, among the writers whose philosophical ideas were united with poetical dreams.

There is a certain similarity in the mental development, views and life of Heine and Hercen. Their pagan and sensual way of thinking, antagonistic to Christian spiritualism, was similar. Both of them were revolutionists; and their revolutionary principles were

developed under the influence of the Count de SaintSimon's doctrines and Hegel's philosophy; but the order of the formation of their views was inverted. Heine, while young, was dazzled by Hegel, but he did not know what to do with his philosophy and how to apply it to life; only later, aided by Saint-Simon's doctrines, was he able to separate its revolutionary elements. Hercen, on the other hand, first became acquainted with SaintSimon and was already disposed to revolution when he began to study Hegel, who strengthened his revolutionary views. In their revolutionary ideas they were both mystics, Hercen believing in the mission of Russia, while Heine's dreams were full of German-Jewish Messianism. Both men, finding their own countries unfavourable to their ideas, were obliged to wander in foreign lands.

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There is, moreover, a similarity in Heine's History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany' and Hercen's Letters on Dilettantism in Learning.' Heine's most striking characteristic is his sensualism. There was seething in him the hot blood of the Semites-the same blood as that of the philosopher-king, who, having convinced himself that everything is vanitas vanitatum, composed songs in honour of sensual love, as the only consolation in life; the same blood as that of those worshippers who, having deserted Jehovah, made sacrifices to Baal and Astarte. The consequence of sensualism is an antipathy towards religion. That hatred of religion, especially of Christianity, was increased by the painful feeling of humiliation to which Heine was exposed on account of his Jewish origin. This he could never forget, unlike his rival Ludwig Boerne, who, in his heart, transformed all the humiliations which he received as a Jew into the most exalted cosmopolitanism of the slighted and oppressed people. Heine thought of vengeance, of abolishing Christianity, of a new social and religious organisation. When he was young he was obliged to keep these thoughts to himself, for he found no sympathisers with them. When in 1831 he went to Paris, he found many capable men who were preaching a complete change of social relations as well as the necessity of a new religion, based on learning, to take the place of Christianity. Those men called themselves Saint-Simonians, and through them he became

acquainted with the works of the French precursor of socialism.

Émile Faguet declared that the starting-point of the French thinkers of the first half of the last century was the fight against individualism. They remained under the shadow of the French Revolution, which unbridled the most savage impulses in human nature; they felt the necessity of strengthening the existing order, or of creating a new one which could steady the human individual with a consciousness of responsibility towards mankind. The most fantastic and least balanced among these restorers was the Count de Saint-Simon, who, with the stubbornness of a monomaniac, dreamed throughout life of the necessity of a new spiritual power in a new Church, which would replace the outward forms of Christianity.

Saint-Simon's guiding thought is that in the social organisation two types, corresponding with two phases of spiritual life, are alone possible-the feudal or the military, and the industrial. The feudal type was strong during the theological period of arbitrary beliefs, while the industrial, which is the result of the positive sciences and is based on observation and experiments, replaces religion. For a long time mankind lived in the theologicofeudal period; now we are in the transitional epoch, the first expression of which was the Reformation, which shook the foundations of the old order. Luther's work was continued in the 17th and 18th centuries, during which the conflict passed to the political sphere. This is followed by the complete revolution which will begin the scientific-industrial phase, at the head of which will stand students and manufacturers. The foundation of the new order will be the principle that 'everybody should gain importance and benefit according to his ability and his investment.' In that way the old division of the people into rich and poor will remain. The lot of the poor, however, must be and will be improved. This was Saint-Simon's principal aim; and he came to the conclusion that the new order would improve the mutual relations of the two social strata-the possessors and the handworkers-when love will rule over the

* Politiques et Moralistes,' vol. ii, Paris, 1898.

souls of students and manufacturers. Hence came the thought of the necessity of religion, sowing brotherly sentiments in human hearts. Saint-Simon was dominated by this conception, and he spent the last years of his life in writing his book on 'New Christianity,' in which he expressed his belief in God and in the divinity of Christ, as well as his conviction that religion could be reconciled with modern science.

Saint-Simon's followers and disciples, among them such Jews as Gustave Eichthal, the brothers Rodriguez and the brothers Pereire, developed the master's thought in a materialistic and anti-Christian direction with an admixture of mysticism. Since, in their opinion, the positive sciences restored to matter the importance taken from it by Christianity, which teaches that spirit is superior to matter, the new religion, seeking its basis not in the fables of revelation but in profound study, ought to proclaim the equality of spirit and matter. The rehabilitation of the body was to become the foundation of the new ethics; but this rehabilitation was changed by others into the mystically sensuous cult of the body.

The doctrine of the Saint-Simonians inflamed the imagination of Heine, who found in it the confirmation of his sensualism. He accepted Saint-Simon's view of the Reformation and the Revolution as events announcing the proximity of a complete change in human relations, and became enthusiastic about the new religion of the body, which would replace the Christianity he detested and make the world happy. Looking through the prism of the Saint-Simonians at Hegel's philosophy, on which he was brought up, and on that of Spinoza, to which he was particularly attracted and which he regarded as the highest product of the Jewish mind, he discovered in the pantheism of both philosophers the elements of a new materialistic religion, antagonistic to Christian spiritualism. The discovery filled him with joy, for it seemed to him that in the cult of matter Jewish and German thought were closely united. In that soil grew his German-Jewish Messianism, teaching that in the ideas of the Jew Spinoza, who lived in the epoch of the degeneration of Christianity, there was the foundation of pantheism, called forth for the purpose of destroying

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