in part of the struggles of very numerous and zealous advocates of a larger search into the ethics of human opinion, and the free range of human thought, than has been customary, or formally approved in recent years.
“Earnest men and conservative rulers have extended the supposed sphere of their authority to the restraint of intellectual aspiration and the suppression of metaphysical effort after the transcendent and the holy inthe relations between man and his Maker. Very strenuous efforts both of power and of rhetoric have been legitimized to restrain the evolving elasticity of mental effort, that springs of necessity, from conformation and from temperament such as God has bestowed on each human mind, and to restrict the limits of thought within the enshackled range of fixed prescription and à priori decree. In harmony with this effort for a wider mental life, and a more naturally emotional expression of religious feeling, tending and leading to a more expanding experience in the apprehension of human opportunities in every domain of mind, of morals, and of mercantile industry, has been exhibited the peculiar, albeit not naturally peculiar, taste and skill of my own people in those departments that are most intimately associated with the accumulation of wealth, the laws and customary principles that control mercantile relations, and the dexterous or in the apprehension of some, the magical knowledge of computation and of exchange that enable ordinary comparison to perfect its combinations. The Hebrews are the bankers, the
