common patois of the peasantry. Imagine wife and children of the same stamp. Moreover the apartment they lived in was a hovel of smoke, black as coal inside and out, without a chimney, but with merely an opening in the roof for the exit of the smoke-an opening which was carefully closed as soon as the fire was allowed to go out, in order that the heat might not escape. The windows were narrow strips of pine laid crosswise over one another and covered with paper. This apartment served for sitting, drinking, eating, study, and sleep. Now think of this room intensely heated, and the smoke, as generally happens in winter, driven back by wind and damp into the room, which is filled with it even to suffocation. Here hang foul washing and other dirty pieces of clothing on poles fixed across the room, for the purpose of killing the vermin in the smoke. Here hang sausages to dry, from which the fat is constantly trickling down on the heads of people. Yonder stand tubs with sour cabbage and beets, which form the chief food of the Lithuanians. corner stands the water for daily use, and alongside of it the dirty water. Here bread is kneaded, cooking and baking are done, the cow is milked, and so forth.

In a

In this magnificent dwelling the peasants sit on the bare earth; you dare not sit higher, if you do not wish to be suffocated with the smoke. Here they drink brandy, and riot. In a corner sit the people of the house; I used to sit behind the stove with my dirty half-naked scholars, and expound to them out of an old tattered Bible from Hebrew into Russian Jewish. All this made such a splendid group as deserved to be sketched only by a Hogarth, and to be sung only by a Butler.*

The miserable tutor goes on to add to the picture of his sufferings some traits of barbarous license and cruelty perpetrated by a Russian regiment which had been billeted in the village and neighbourhood; but the details are almost too unsavoury for translation. It is not surprising that in this pitiable plight he should acknowledge, Brandy became of necessity my only comfort; it enabled me to forget all my misery.'

Such were the unfavourable conditions under which Maimon struggled for intellectual life, and the result was, not unnaturally, a revolution rather than a growth. But such a revo

lution could not fail to send its influences beyond the region of the intellect into the moral and spiritual life. It is to be feared, indeed, that the removal of the old landmarks of thought by which he had been guided did not lead to the most satisfactory results; that in fact he never came to complete harmony with himself in the higher regions of mental existence. His confessions, which at times are almost as offensively frank as those of Rousseau, leave no room for doubt that, at least at a later period when he came under the shock of the multitudinous novel influences of German society, his revolt against the narrow life of speculation to which he had been confined in Poland led to his abandonment of those simple rules of moral conduct which have been found among all *Vol. i. pp. 198-200.

civilized communities indispensable to individual and social well-being. But as long as he remained in Poland, his intellectual development exerted a more wholesome influence on his life. Apparently, and naturally, the same culture which revealed to him the explanation of physical phenomena, forced him to inquire into the meaning of the religious phenomena to which he and his people had been accustomed. Under this impulse he soon came to recognize the truth that all religious ceremonies are mere 'forms of godliness,' which are of no value when they have lost their power; and he began accordingly to aspire after a spiritual life which grasped the realities that are symbolized in the forms of religious worship. This aspiration attracted him for a while to the Jewish sect called Hasidim, 'the pious,' which evidently has an affinity, in its character as well as its name, with the pietists of the Christian Church, and in its practical precepts encourages asceticism almost as extravagant as any that has been enjoined by the most irrational of monastic sects. For a man who had tasted, like Maimon, the delights of intellectual freedom, it was impossible to remain at this stage of spiritual development; and his first advance was to an attitude which represents the philosophical counterpart of religious asceticism-that of the cynic.

This attitude of his internal life, combined with the discomfort of his external circumstances, his imperious intellectual cravings, and the insuperable obstacles to their satisfaction, produced a state of such unendurable discontent, that he resolved at last upon quitting Poland. The outlet to the trade of the river Niemen, on which it will be remembered that Maimon's native village lay, is the Prussian town of Königsberg; and he induced one of the traders on the river to take him thither by boat. We might have expected that at Königsberg he would have sought the acquaintance of Immanuel Kant, through whom the old university town was acquiring a permanent place in European literature; but Maimon was utterly ignorant of the great movements of thought outside of Judaism. On his arrival at Königsberg he fortunately fell in with a party of students, who at first made a little excusable fun at his expense, but soon discovered that he was no ordinary man. In spite of the obstacles of his strange dialect, which was a mixture of German, Hebrew, and Lithuanian, he succeeded in making known to them his intentions. On their advice he resolved to go on to Berlin, and with the young enthusiasm of student comrades they gave him some generous help for the journey.

The incidents of this journey are related at times with amusing, but oftener with pathetic, effect. To realize the hardships which Maimon suffered, the difficulties of travelling a century ago must be remembered: it took him five weeks to go by sea from Königsberg to Stettin, and two or three weeks more to reach Berlin. It must also be kept in mind that he had to depend for support on such charitable gifts as were offered to him on the way, and to find rest on the straw of any stable or barn in which he was allowed to take refuge for the night. When he arrived at Berlin, the poor wanderer thought that he had reached the end of his misery; but he was disappointedthe worst was yet to come.

In those old days, though they were the days when Moses Mendelssohn was one of the most influential thinkers in German literature, and Lessing was writing 'Nathan der Weise,' and Kant was about to publish his 'Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der reinen Vernunft,' the ancient municipal regulations for the Jews were still with all their barbarity enforced in the principal towns of Germany. Berlin confined Jews to a single gate for their entrance and exit from the city, and beggars of the Jewish race were absolutely excluded. The Jews of Berlin had therefore provided near the gate a sort of hospital in which their poor countrymen might find refuge. To this institution Maimon sought admittance, and applied to a man, whose dress showed him to be a rabbi, in order that he might make known the object of his visit to Berlin. Unfortunately this rabbi happened to belong to the straitest sect of the Pharisees, and was horrified to meet with another rabbi so regardless of the orthodox faith as to make a long journey for the purpose of studying sciences which are not recognized in Talmudic tradition. The result was that the municipal regulations of Berlin were called into force by the orthodox Jewish authorities to prevent the unhappy traveller from even entering the city, and with the charitable gift of a pfennig he was dismissed from the hospital.

It is impossible to read without being deeply affected the story of Maimon's misery and. despair over this disappointment. For the greater part of the day he lay by the roadside helplessly bewailing his lot, and able to answer only with inarticulate sobs the questions of sympathetic passers-by. Strangely enough the only man to play a part at all resembling that of the good Samaritan was a professional beggar whom he met accidentally on the way. In company with this fellow he strolled through the country for some six months, obliged to make his living by beggary. In this

capacity he made his way to a town in Posen, where he fortunately came upon an old Polish acquaintance who introduced him to the chief rabbi of the place. The rabbi was at once astonished at the Talmudic learning of Maimon, took him into his house, and supplied him with clothes; and the grateful wanderer describes with touching pathos the delight he had that night on enjoying the rest of a bed the first time for many months. Through this rabbi he attained a position of comfort as tutor in a wealthy Jewish family, and he speaks of the following two years as being the happiest of his life. The leisure which he thus enjoyed enabled him to extend his studies, and apparently these were occupied a good deal with the writings of his celebrated namesake of the twelfth century, Moses ben Maimon, commonly known by the classical patronymic, Maimonides. Of this great thinker, Maimon speaks with almost idolatrous veneration, as having contributed more than all other influences to the development of his mental character. He therefore interrupts his narrative at this point to introduce a long dissertation on the works of Maimonides, extending through ten chapters of the second volume, and intended to explain especially the drift of the celebrated treatise, More Nevochim.'

But under the influence of these studies, Maimon began again to crave for the intellectual stir of Berlin life. This craving was intensified by the occasional conflicts which arose between his advancing opinions and the orthodoxy dominant in the circle in which he moved. Accordingly, overcoming the allurements of the external comfort which he enjoyed, he started once more for Berlin. With the means he had acquired he was able to enter the city under more favourable auspices than before, and fortunately soon after his arrival he made the acquaintance of Moses Mendelssohn and other men of literary taste and social position. It took a long time for him, however, to fit into the usages of German social life, and it appears from his own confessions that his habit of playing the pauper, not to speak of faults more serious still, began ere long to repel the sympathy of his best friends. After they had endeavoured for some years to open for him a career by which he might attain independence, it became clear that all their efforts were in vain. At last Mendelssohn found it necessary to come to an explanation, and with kindly frankness stated to Maimon the complaints of his friends. The interview between the two men was exceedingly characteristic of both, and the result of it was that Maimon saw he could remain in Berlin no longer.

For a few years after this, therefore, his life becomes again unsettled. Most of the time was spent in Holland and in Hamburg. Although he had no permanent occupation, he succeeded somehow in finding the means of support, but the difficulty of doing so at times drove him to all the resources of despair. Once he appears on the verge of committing suicide; at another time his desperate circumstances are perhaps even more strikingly indicated by his proposal to abandon the Jewish faith. He had of course learned from experience since he left Poland that one of the greatest obstacles to his success in life lay in his nationality, and when in Hamburg, he formed the resolution to connect himself with the Christian Church. Accordingly he made known his intention to a Lutheran pastor in a letter which is certainly one of the most extraordinary ever addressed to a Christian minister. It ran as follows:

'I am a native of Poland, belonging to the Jewish nation, destined by my education and studies to become a rabbi, but in the thickest darkness Í have perceived some light. This induced me to search further after light and truth, and to free myself completely from the darkness of superstition and ignorance. In order to this end, which could not be attained in my native place, I came to Berlin, where by the support of some illuminati of our nation I studied for some years-not indeed after any plan, but merely to satisfy my craving for knowledge. But as our nation is unable to make use, not only of such planless studies, but even of those conducted on the most perfect plan, it cannot be blamed for becoming tired of them and pronouncing their encouragement to be useless. I have therefore resolved, in order to secure my temporal as well as eternal happiness, which depends on the attainment of perfection, and in order to become useful to myself as well as others, to accept the Christian religion. It is true the Jewish religion, in regard to its articles of faith, comes nearer to reason than the Christian. But since the latter in regard to practical use has an advantage over the former, and since morality, which consists not in opinions, but in actions, is the aim of all religions in general, clearly the latter comes nearer than the former to this aim. Moreover, I hold the mysteries of the Christian religion for that which they are, that is, allegorical representations of the truths that are most important for man. By this means I make my faith in them harmonize with reason, but I cannot believe them according to their common meaning. I beg therefore most respectfully an answer to the question, whether after this confession I am worthy of the Christian religion or not. In the former case I am ready to carry my proposal into effect. In the latter, however, I must give up all claim to a religion which enjoins me to liethat is, to deliver in words a confession of faith which contradicts my

reason.

This letter was followed by an interview, quite as characteristic, with the good clergyman addressed; and it can scarcely surprise any one that Maimon's proposal was never * Vol. ii. pp. 216-18.