man evidence in the guidance of his opinions now settle
with himself what that evidence is worth.

[Sidenote: Supernaturalism appertains to a period of life.] But, though
in one sense this history is humiliating to the philosopher, in another
it is full of interest. Supernaturalism, both in the individual and in
society, appertains to a definite period of life. It is shaken off as
men and nations approach maturity. The child and the youth people
solitude and darkness with unrealities. The adult does not so much
convince himself of their fictitious nature by reasoning on the results
of his experience--he grows out of them, as we see that society has
done. Nevertheless, his emancipation is quickened if he is among those
who instruct his curiosity and deride his fears. It was in this manner
that the decline of supernaturalism in the West was very much
accelerated by Jewish physicians. They, more than the lawyers, were
concerned in the ending of these delusions. [Sidenote: Influence of the
Jews on supernaturalism.] These apparitions, as is the nature of their
kind, vanished as soon as the crowing of the Aesculapian cock announced
that the intellectual day of Europe was on the point of breaking. The
Jews held in their hands much of the trade of the world; they were in
perpetual movement and commercial intercommunication. Locomotion--for
such is always its result--tended to make them intellectual. The
persecutions under which they had long suffered bound their distant
communities together. The Spanish Jews knew very well what was going on
among their co-religionists beyond the Euphrates. As Cabanis says, "They
were our factors and bankers before we knew how to read; they were also
our first physicians." To this it may be added that they were, for
centuries, the only men in Europe who saw the course of human affairs
from the most general point of view.

The Hellenizing Jewish physicians inoculated the Arabs with learning on
their first meeting with them in Alexandria, obtaining a private and
personal influence with many of khalifs, and from that central point of
power giving an intellectual character to the entire Saracenic movement.
We have already seen that in this they were greatly favoured by the
approximation of their unitarianism to that of the Mohammedans. The
intellectual activity of the Asiatic and African Jews soon communicated
an impulse to those of Europe. The Hebrew doctor was viewed by the
vulgar with wonder, fe