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George Eliot and Judaism.
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old world reaches further down than the era of the French Revolution, was not national, in our sense; and therefore that cannot be demanded from the Jews which was wholly lacking to their circumstances. It has been reserved first for Hate and then for Science to begin, in this century, the recognition of a nationality among the Jews. For if attention has always been directed to the fact that evidences of Jewish descent follow deserters from their colours even to the fourth degree, in spite of all the paint of mock-enlightenment and the holy water of conversion, as though avenging Nature insisted upon retaining the hateful hereditary blemish in the features of the renegade; so it more especially challenged reflection at a time when investigation aimed at going to the roots of phenomena, and progress made bold to demand rights for the long-oppressed aliens. On one side enemies were work-