the history of ethics appears. There is great need of such a study, a book like that Maurice wrote for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, but more modern and scientific.

So far as this book of Dr. Waldstein's specialises, it is original, without being extraordinary. Aiming at an analysis of emotion and intellect, it attempts also to gain a criterion by which they may be measured and regulated. The analysis is good, but, the criterion. does not seem to be reached. there is room for such work as the

Yet

author gives us, and thoughtful men should be thankful to have here afforded them a new position from which to regard the problem of education.

The Indian Pilgrim. By Jogesh Chunder Dutt. Calcutta: I. C. Bose and Co., Stanhope Press.

The Dutt family must be a breed of poets, for it is but a few months since in this magazine was reviewed the poem of a Calcutta justice, Shoshee Chunder Dutt, Rai Báhádoor. The author of the little work before us has not yet fully developed his powers; and the stanzas of this lengthy poem are unequal in merit and occasionally slightly ungrammatical. The fol lowing, however, are quotable:

I stood within the temple of the god,

The temple of the "lord of earth and main,"

Which oft many a pilgrim's feet have trod

To clean them of their sin and worldly stain.

I stood, and perfumes burnt within the fane ;

The scented smoke now darkened half the room.

They sang aloud a wild beseeching strain To their great god who rules the human doom,

Whose dread attendants are the spirits of the gloom.

And now they danced a curious antique dance

Their manly limbs with ashes silvered o'er ;

It seemed to me some wild and frantic prance

As sprites may do on lonely haunted

moor.

The silent crowds there waited at the door While loudly rang the bells both great

and small.

'Twas solemn scene, it touched me to the

core.

Amazed I looked, leaning against the wall.

What tho' in faith they err;-with hope and love they call.

Lyrics and Landscapes. By Guy Roslyn. London: Arthur Moxon.

At the end of this volume are printed many quotations from reVillage

views of the author's << Verses." These are so favourable that we feel quite abashed at our want of taste in regard to the book under our notice. It is full of verses that do not offend the ear by false metres or doubtful rhymes, but that is really all that can be said in its favour. It is time that the critic be firm in telling the honest truth about such inoffensive meek little books as this. It is almost a sin to let them see the light, for they are as useless and unfortunate as flies born in a wintry day.

I.

THE actual civilisation of Europe is not of indigenous growth. It contains, no doubt, a strong native element, the force of which, it may be said, has been habitually too much overlooked. Old Teutonic virtues may even now be found to live and thrive in the sparsely peopled regions of the North, and under the rigors of an Alpine or a Baltic winter. But through the greater parts of Western and Southern Europe, and, indeed, wherever the stately fabric of the Catholic Church has pressed upon the structure of society, an influence altogether foreign to the principles of Aryan civilisation has proved to be a powerful element in the transformation of opinion and of habit. This influence has been that of the Law and of a portion of the literature of a Semitic people as expounded by expounded by the fiercest enemies of their race. The actual significance and force of that law, and the effects which its prescriptions produced on the nation that prided itself on its

observance, the Catholic doctors have altogether scorned to study. They have commenced their expositions by denying that the Jews understood their own Law, or are competent witnesses as to the meaning of that literature, the preservation of which is due entirely to their reverent care. Not only has orthodox Catholicity attributed to the sacred books of the Hebrew Scriptures doctrines nowhere to be deduced from the plain grammatical meaning of the language, but it has assigned canons of interpretation which are altogether subversive of the primary principles of the Law thus misrepresented. If there was one doctrine of the ancient law which above all others was its ineffaceable characteristic it was that of im

mutable permanence. The language attributed to the Jewish Legislator as to this is as definite as is competent to human speech. But it is not more definite, positive, and unqualified than is the repetition of the same phraseology which is attributed by the writers of the

Gospels to the Founder of Christianity.*

Indeed, the Aryan idea of development, progress, and the excellence of novelty is the very opposite of the Semitic idea of permanence, divine perfection, and hatred of innovation. Language spoken or written by men of the latter race is either unintelligible or obnoxious to men of the former, when it is a question of what is true, authoritative, and perfect. Thus the influence on Christendom of the Law of Moses, in so far as it has been declared by Catholic doctors to be partially or eclectically binding on the conscience, has been not only that of an alien and foreign institution, but that of such an institution wholly perverted and misunderstood at all events, in the judgment of the countrymen of the law-giver and the subjects and original students of the law.

From the primary and central dogma of the Jewish faith, down to the minutest prescription of the later sages and legislators of the Hebrew people, there is, perhaps, not a single detail of which the Catholic Church has taken hold of which it has not absolutely reversed the true import, if the Semitic race understand their own language, laws, and institutions. It is not so much the object of the present pages to illustrate this view, instructive as the task may be, as to glance at the ethical ideal which is the outcome of the Law of Moses, understanding by that law, as all competent scholars must do, not actually rules derived by foreign teachers from translations of the contents of either or all of the three divisions of the Hebrew canon, but the outcome of the written law, explained by

that mass of Synhedral enactments and judicial decisions which bear to the Pentateuch a relation as indispensable to its intelligent comprehension, as do the reports of cases and judicial decisions, in our own country, to the bare letter of the statutes at large.

In the discussions that are now exciting so vivid an interest as to the relations of religion and of ethics, or the relative provinces of Science and Faith, the first and perhaps the greatest difficulty is to clear the ground. We are entering on a new method of inquiry, although the field on which it is to be applied is very ancient. We are thus perplexed at every step by unconscious assumptions of matters which require not to be assumed, but to be proved. We are in constant danger of using well-worn terms in a sense that may be misleading. It is, for example, a very constant assumption that the religious sentiments, hopes, and habits of a pious Jew in old times differed so little from those proper to be encouraged in a pious Christian, that the former may be taken, with some slight changes, as a model and example for the latter. How erroneous the assumption is will be perhaps partly understood if we attempt to present a sketch of the ideal Jew, the man formed on the perfect pattern of his law, as explained by its most illustrious doctors. It may be instructive further to place by the side of this portrait that of the most complete and perfect example of the rule of Christian doctrine, as laid down by the great authorities of the historic Latin Church, and by the men who were to Catholicism what Aristotle was to Greek philosophy, and what Maimonides

was to

Hebrew ethics and literature; such as Thomas à Kempis and Ignatius Loyola. Lastly, it may be desirable to place alongside of the perfect Jew, according to the written and oral law, and of the perfect Christian, according to the "De Imitatione Jesu Christi," and the utterances of contemporary Catholicism, a sketch of the character that might be formed by the observance of the ethical rule of Aristotle the systematic pursuit of true felicity, by promoting the energy of the soul according to virtue.

II.

A primary condition of the existence of the model Jew demands rather more notice than might otherwise be awarded to it, from its essential and irreconcileable opposition to the fundamental assumptions of orthodox Christianity. Christianity, in all its varied sects, may be said to be based on the assumption of the inherent evil of human nature, and the radical inability of any human being (without aid of a nature approaching the miraculous), to keep the Divine laws. The first assumption of the Jewish teacher was the opposite. Not only was the Law Divine perfect and immutable, but it was capable of being obeyed, and was held to be practically and habitually obeyed, by the pious Jew. Evidence as to this statement is derivable from sources not exclusively Jewish. No Christian writer speaks with more authority than the Evangelist who tells of a priest and his wife as "both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless,"* without any indication that such characters were unusual.

The language "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are,"+ presumptuous and indecent as it may appear to English ears, was but the echo of the whole services of the sanctuary; and the only observation which could have been made by such a teacher as Hillel in depreciation of that utterance would have been, that the reference to the publican ought not to have been so made in the earshot of the latter, if he were a Jew, as to call the blush of shame to his cheek.‡ Christ quoted the words of preceding prophets in enjoining on his hearers to "be perfect, even as their Father in Heaven was perfect;" and we have no intimation that any of these hearers thought the phrase was either a satire, or a recommendation to do what was impossible, either as found in the Law or as repeated by Christ. If the prescriptions of the Law were broken through inadvertence, the machinery of the trespass offering remedied the defect. Even in the graver case of wilful neglect or disobedience, there could never arise that long fear and misery of the conscience which some teachers declare to be the very life of Christianity. For crimes judicially provable by at least two witnesses, the exact punishments were apportioned. For crimes thought to have been committed, but not so provable, there was the resource of the peace offering, as well as that of the national expiation on the Great Day of Atonement. That day passed, all previous sin was not only pardoned, but blotted out. For God was regarded as the avenger of his own law, and the sanction that restrained the Jew from wilful but concealed crime was the fear of sudden death before

Capita Patrum, cap. iv., Mish. 3.

the next day of atonement. Thus for every wrong there was a remedy. If even capital punishment were inflicted, the hope of future happiness was unaffected.* "No second

penalty for the same offence" was the grand principle of the Law; and thus no Jew needed to live on doubtful terms with his own conscience.

It is evident that the influence of a code of this nature on the entire character must have been something very different from that of any religious or ethical system with which we are familiar. If, on the one hand, there was a tendency to encourage a degree of self-satisfaction which must degenerate into an insane self-conceit,† on the other hand the negation of the self-contradictory assertion that it is the duty of man to do what he is practically unable to do avoided that confusion between right and wrong which is the necessary result of such a doctrine. Peace of mind and integrity of conscience were not only within the reach of the Jew, but their enjoyment appears to have been contemplated by the legislator as to be afforded him as his normal condition. Doubts and difficulties, self-torturing apprehensions, conflicting opinions as to religious duty, were out of the pale of that narrow but eminently practical code which summed up and precisely defined the entire duty of man. The influence of this master principle in forming a national character cannot easily be over-rated.

The life of the Jew, regarded as

passed in conformity to the Divine law, was divided by the sages who wrote the treatise Pirke Aboth of the Mishna (the tenth tract of the fourth order) into thirteen distinct periods. Omitting the quaint ceremonies that accompanied and followed the nativity of a Jewish boy, we find that at five years old he was to be taught the letters of the Sacred Books; at ten he was to commence the study of the Mishna; at thirteen he was held to the precepts of the law, became a responsible agent, and his father was no longer held liable for his transgressions of any command; at fifteen he was to commence the study of the Ghemara, or third part of the Talmud; thus giving five years to the Mikra, or written law; five years to the Mishna, or spoken law; and five years to the Comments of the Sages. At eighteen he was to marry, one of the reasons for fixing this age being taken from the occurrence of the word "Adam" eighteen times in the Parascha, or section of the Pentateuch commencing "Let us make man." At twenty he was to addict himself to the pursuit of money; at thirty he was called upon for toil; at forty commenced the period of prudence, and at fifty of counsel. Old age began at sixty, and hoary hairs at seventy. Ninety was the signal to prepare for the tomb, and the man of 100 was considered as if dead, and no longer belonging to the world.

Within this narrow round lay the whole routine of Jewish life. Forty-eight blessings were to be

Capita Patrum, cap. v. Mish. 21.