tic. A nation is everywhere a great
child, which can certainly be educated; but its education would, even
in most favorable circumstances, occupy such a vast amount of time
that we could, as already mentioned, remove our own difficulties by
other means long before the process was accomplished.

Assimilation, by which I understood not only external conformity in
dress, habits, customs, and language, but also identity of feeling and
manner--assimilation of Jews could be effected only by intermarriage.
But the need for mixed marriages would have to be felt by the
majority; their mere recognition by law would certainly not suffice.

The Hungarian Liberals, who have just given legal sanction to mixed
marriages, have made a remarkable mistake which one of the earliest
cases clearly illustrates; a baptized Jew married a Jewess. At the
same time the struggle to obtain the present form of marriage
accentuated distinctions between Jews and Christians, thus hindering
rather than aiding the fusion of races.

Those who really wished to see the Jews disappear through intermixture
with other nations, can only hope to see it come about in one way. The
Jews must previously acquire economic power sufficiently great to
overcome the old social prejudice against them. The aristocracy may
serve as an example of this, for in its ranks occur the
proportionately largest numbers of mixed marriages. The Jewish
families which regild the old nobility with their money become
gradually absorbed. But what form would this phenomenon assume in the
middle classes, where (the Jews being a bourgeois people) the Jewish
question is mainly concentrated? A previous acquisition of power could
be synonymous with that economic supremacy which Jews are already
erroneously declared to possess. And if the power they now possess
creates rage and indignation among the Anti-Semites, what outbreaks
would such an increase of power create? Hence the first step towards
absorption will never be taken, because this step would involve the
subjection of the majority to a hitherto scorned minority, possessing
neither military nor administrative power of its own. I think,
therefore, that the absorption of Jews by means of their prosperity is
unlikely to occur. In countries which now are Anti-Semitic my view
will be approved. In others, where Jews now feel comfortable, it will
probably be violently disputed by them. My happier co-religionists
will not believe me till Jew-baiti