Let us enter a Jewish school of
Babylonia
some time
after the year 325 A.
after the year 325 A.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
The marquise her mother, the author of mythological
and pastoral operas, has a theatre built in the chateau; a great
crowd of company resorts to it from Bourbon-Lancy and Mou-
lins: after rehearsing twelve weeks the little girl, with a quiver
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
of arrows and blue wings, plays the part of Cupid, and the cos-
tume is so becoming she is allowed to wear it for common during
the entire day for nine months. To finish the business they send
for a dancing-fencing master, and still wearing the Cupid cos-
tume, she takes lessons in fencing and in deportment. “The
«
entire winter is devoted to playing comedy and tragedy. ” Sent
out of the room after dinner, she is brought in again only to
play on the harpsichord or to declaim the monologue of Alzire
before a numerous assembly. Undoubtedly such extravagances
are not customary: but the spirit of education is everywhere the
same; that is to say, in the eyes of parents there is but one
intelligible and rational existence,- that of society,— even for
children; and the attentions bestowed on these are solely with a
view to introduce them into it or to prepare them for it.
Even in the last years of the ancient régime, little boys have
their hair powdered, “a pomatumed chignon [bourse), ringlets, and
curls”; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill,
and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with
the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a
whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered
with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of
false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with
plumes, and so high that frequently the chin is half-way down
to her feet ”; sometimes they put rouge on her face.
She is a
miniature lady, and she knows it: she is fully up in her part,
without effort or inconvenience, by force of habit; the unique,
the perpetual instruction she gets is that on her deportment: it
may be said with truth that the fulcrum of education in this
country is the dancing-master. They could get along with him
without any others; without him the others were of no use. For
without him, how could people go through easily, suitably, and
gracefully, the thousand and one actions of daily life,- walking,
sitting down, standing up, offering the arm, using the fan,
listening and smiling, before eyes so experienced and before such
a refined public? This is to be the great thing for them when
they become men and women, and for this reason it is the
thing of chief importance for them as children. Along with
graces of attitude and of gesture, they already have those of the
mind and of expression. Scarcely is their tongue loosened when
they speak the polished language of their parents. The latter
amuse themselves with them and use them as pretty dolls; the
C
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preaching of Rousseau, which during the last third of the last
century brought children into fashion, produces no other effect.
They are made to recite their lessons in public, to perform in
proverbs, to take parts in pastorals. Their sallies are encouraged.
They know how to turn a compliment, to invent a clever or
affecting repartee, to be gallant, sensitive, and even spirituelle.
The little Duc d'Angoulême, holding a book in his hand, receives
Suffren, whom he addresses thus: "I was reading Plutarch and
his Illustrious Men. You could not have entered more àpropos. ”
The children of M. de Sabran, a boy and a girl, one eight, and
the other nine, having taken lessons from the comedians Sainval
and Larive, come to Versailles to play before the King and Queen
in Voltaire's Oreste'; and on the little fellow being interrogated
about the classic authors, he replies to a lady, the mother of three
charming girls, “Madame, Anacreon is the only poet I can think
of here! ” Another, of the same age, replies to a question of
Prince Henry of Prussia with an agreeable impromptu in verse.
To cause witticisms, insipidities, and mediocre verse to germinate
in a brain eight years old - what a triumph for the culture of
the day! It is the last characteristic of the régime which after
having stolen man away from public affairs, from his own affairs,
from marriage, from the family, hands him over, with all his sen-
timents and all his faculties, to social worldliness,- he and all
that belong to him. Below him fine ways and forced politeness
prevail, even with his servants and tradesmen. A Frontin has a
gallant unconstrained air, and he turns a compliment. An abigail
needs only to be a kept mistress to become a lady. A shoe-
maker is monsieur in black," who says to a mother on salut-
ing the daughter, Madame, a charming young person, and I am
more sensible than ever of the value of your kindness; ” on which
the young girl, just out of a convent, takes him for a suitor and
blushes scarlet. Undoubtedly less unsophisticated eyes would dis-
tinguish the difference between this pinchbeck louis d'or and a
genuine one; but their resemblance suffices to show the universal
action of the central mint — machinery which stamps both with
the same effigy, the base metal and the refined gold.
»
a
A society which obtains such ascendency must possess some
charm: in no country indeed, and in no age, has so perfect
a social art rendered life so agreeable. Paris is the schoolhouse
of Europe, - a school of urbanity to which the youth of Russia,
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Germany, and England resort to become civilized. Lord Ches-
terfield in his letters never tires of reminding his son of this,
and of urging him into these drawing-rooms, which will remove
"his Cambridge rust. ” Once familiar with them they are never
abandoned; or if one is obliged to leave them, one always sighs
for them. Nothing is comparable,” says Voltaire, to the
genial life one leads there, in the bosom of the arts and of
calm and refined voluptuousness; strangers and monarchs have
preferred this repose — so agreeably occupied and so enchanting -
to their own countries and thrones. The heart there softens and
melts away like aromatics slowly dissolving in moderate heat,
evaporating in delightful perfumes. ” Gustavus III. , beaten by
the Russians, declares that he will pass his last days in Paris in
a house on the boulevards; and this is not merely compliment-
ary, for he sends for plans and an estimate. A supper or an
evening entertainment brings people two hundred leagues away.
Some friends of the Prince de Ligne “leave Brussels after break-
fast, reach the opera in Paris just in time to see the curtain rise,
and after the spectacle is over, return immediately to Brussels,
traveling all night. ”
Of this delight, so eagerly sought, we have only imperfect
copies; and we are obliged to revive it intellectually. It consists,
in the first place, in the pleasure of living with perfectly polite
people: there is no enjoyment more subtle, more lasting, more
inexhaustible. The self-love of man being infinite, intelligent
people are always able to produce some refinement of atten-
tion to gratify it. Worldly sensibility being infinite, there is no
imperceptible shade of it permitting indifference. After all, man
is still the greatest source of happiness or of misery to man;
and in those days the ever-flowing fountain brought to him
sweetness instead of bitterness. Not only was it essential not to
offend, but it was essential to please: one was expected to lose
:
sight of oneself in others, to be always cordial and good-humored,
to keep one's own vexations and grievances in one's own breast,
to spare others melancholy ideas, and to supply them with cheer-
ful ideas. "Was any one old in those days ? It is the Revolu-
tion which brought old age into the world. Your grandfather,
my child, was handsome, elegant, neat, gracious, perfumed, play-
ful, amiable, affectionate, and good-tempered, to the day of his
death. People then knew how to live and how to die; there
was no such thing as troublesome infirmities. If any one had the
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14445
gout, he walked along all the same and made no faces; people
well brought up concealed their sufferings. There was none of
that absorption in business which spoils a man inwardly and
dulls his brain. People knew how to ruin themselves without
letting it appear, like good gamblers who lose their money with-
out showing uneasiness or spite. A man would be carried half
dead to a hunt. It was thought better to die at a ball or at
the play, than in one's bed between four wax candles and horrid
men in black. People were philosophers: they did not assume
to be austere, but often were so without making a display of
it. If one was discreet, it was through inclination, and without
pedantry or prudishness. People enjoyed this life, and when the
hour of departure came they did not try to disgust others with
living. The last request of my old husband was that I would
survive him as long as possible, and live as happily as I could. ”
[So discourses her beautiful grandmother to George Sand. ]
DRAWING-ROOM LIFE
From “The Ancient Régime. Copyright 1876, by Henry Holt
O *
NE can very well understand this kind of pleasure in a sum.
mary way, but how is it to be made apparent ? Taken by
themselves the pastimes of society are not to be described:
they are too ephemeral; their charm arises from their accompani-
ments. A narrative of them would be but tasteless dregs, — does
the libretto of an opera give any idea of the opera itself? If
the reader would revive for himself this vanished world, let him
seek for it in those works that have preserved its externals or
its accent; and first in the pictures and engravings of Watteau,
Fragonard, and the Saint-Aubins, and then in the novels and dra-
mas of Voltaire and Marivaux, and even in Collé and Crébillon
fils: then do we see the breathing figures and hear their voices.
What bright, winning, intelligent faces, beaming with pleasure
and with the desire to please! What ease in bearing and gest-
ure! What piquant grace in the toilet, in the smile, in vivacity
of expression, in the control of the flute-like voice, in the
coquetry of hidden meanings! How involuntarily we stop to look
and listen! Attractiveness is everywhere, — in the small spirituelle
heads, in the slender hands, in the rumpled attire, in the pretty
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
features, in the demeanor. The slightest gesture, a pouting or
mutinous turn of the head, a plump little wrist peering from its
nest of lace, a yielding waist bent over an embroidery frame, the
rapid rustling of an opening fan, is a feast for the eyes and the
intellect. It is indeed all daintiness, a delicate caress for delicate
senses, extending to the external decoration of life, to the sinu-
ous outlines, the showy drapery, and the refinements of comfort
in the furniture and architecture.
Fill your imagination with these accessories and with these
figures, and you will take as much interest in their amusements
as they did. In such a place and in such company it suffices to
be together to be content. Their indolence is no burden to
them, for they sport with existence. At Chanteloup, the Duc de
Choiseul, in disgrace, finds the fashionable world flocking to see
him; nothing is done, and yet no hours of the day are unoccu-
pied. “The duchess has only two hours' time to herself, and
these two hours are devoted to her toilet and her letters: the
calculation is a simple one,- she gets up at eleven, breakfasts
at noon, and this is followed by conversation, which lasts three
or four hours; dinner comes at six, after which there is play
and the reading of the memoirs of Madame de Maintenon. ”
Ordinarily “the company remains together until two o'clock in
the morning. ” Intellectual freedom is complete. There is no
confusion, no anxiety. They play whist and tric-trac in the
afternoon and faro in the evening. “They do to-day what they
did yesterday, and what they will do to-morrow; the dinner-
supper is to them the most important affair in life, and their
only complaint in the world is of their digestion. Time goes
so fast I always fancy that I arrived only the evening before. ”
Sometimes they get up a little race, and the ladies are disposed
to take part in it, "for they are all very spry and able to run
around the drawing-room five or six times every day. ” But they
prefer indoors to the open air; in these days true sunshine con-
sists of candle-light, and the finest sky is a painted ceiling, - is
there any other less subject to inclemencies, or better adapted to
conversation and merriment? They accordingly chat and jest,
in words with present friends, and by letters with absent friends.
They lecture old Madame du Deffand, who is too lively, and
whom they style the little girl”; the young duchess, tender
and sensible, is her grandmama. ” As for "grandpapa,” M. de
Choiseul, “a slight cold keeping him in bed, he has fairy stories
»
(
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14447
read to him all day long: a species of reading to which we are
all given; we find them as probable as modern history. Do not
imagine that he is unoccupied. He has had a tapestry frame put
up in the drawing-room; at which he works, I cannot say with
the greatest skill, but at least with the greatest assiduity.
Now our delight is in flying a kite: grandpapa has never seen
this sight, and he is enraptured with it. ” The pastime, in itself,
is nothing; it is resorted to according to opportunity or the taste
of the hour, - now taken up and now let alone,- and the abbé
soon writes: "I do not speak about our races, because we race no
more; nor of our readings, because we do not read; nor of our
promenades, because we do not go out. What then do we do?
Some play billiards, others dominoes, and others backgammon.
We weave, we ravel, and we unravel. Time pushes us on, and
we pay him back. ”
Other circles present the same spectacle. Every occupation
being an amusement, a caprice or an impulse of fashion brings
one into favor.
At present it is unraveling; every white hand
at Paris, and in the châteaux, being busy in undoing trimmings,
epaulettes, and old stuffs, to pick out the gold and silver threads.
They find in this employment the semblance of economy, an ap-
pearance of occupation,-in any event something to keep them in
countenance. On a circle of ladies being formed, a big unravel-
ing bag in green taffeta is placed on the table, which belongs to
the lady of the house; immediately all the ladies call for their
bags, and voilà les laquais en l'air. ”
It is all the rage.
They
unravel every day and several hours in the day; some derive
from it a hundred louis d'or per annum. The gentlemen are
expected to provide the materials for the work: the Duc de
Lauzun, accordingly, gives to Madame de V— a harp of nat-
ural size, covered with gold thread; an enormous golden fleece,
brought as a present from the Comte de Lowenthal, and which
cost two or three thousand francs, brings, picked to pieces, five
or six hundred francs. But they do not look into matters so
closely. Some employment is essential for idle hands, some
manual outlet for nervous activity; a humorous petulance breaks
out in the middle of the pretended work. One day, when about
going out, Madame de R- observes that the gold fringe on
her dress would be capital for unraveling; whereupon, with a
dash, she cuts one of the fringes off. Ten women suddenly
surround a man wearing fringes, pull off his coat, and put his
fringes and laces into their bags; just as if a bold flock of
(
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as
)
tomtits, fluttering and chattering in the air, should suddenly dart
on a jay to pluck off its feathers: thenceforth a man who enters
a circle of women stands in danger of being stripped alive.
All this pretty world has the same pastimes, the men
well as the women. Scarcely a man can be found without some
drawing-room accomplishment, some trifling way of keeping his
mind and hands busy, and of filling up the vacant hour: almost
all make rhymes, or act in private theatricals; many of them are
musicians and painters of still-life subjects. M. de Choiseul, as
we have just seen, works at tapestry; others embroider or make
sword-knots. M. de Francueil is a good violinist, and makes vio-
lins himself; and besides this he is “watchmaker, architect, turner,
painter, locksmith, decorator, cook, poet, music-composer, and he
embroiders remarkably well. ” In this general state of inactivity
it is essential « to know how to be pleasantly occupied in behalf
of others as well as in one's own behalf. ” Madame de Pompadour
is a musician, an actress, a painter, and an engraver. Madame
Adelaide learns watchmaking, and plays on all instruments from
a horn to the jew's-harp; not very well, it is true, but as well as a
queen can sing, whose fine voice is never more than half in tune.
But they make no pretensions, The thing is to amuse oneself
and nothing more; high spirits and the amenities of the hour
cover all. Rather read this capital fact of Madame de Lauzun at
Chanteloup:—“Do you know," writes the abbé, that nobody
possesses in a higher degree one quality which you would never
suspect of her, - that of preparing scrambled eggs? This talent
has been buried in the ground, - she cannot recall the time she
acquired it; I believe that she had it at her birth. Accident
made it known, and immediately it was put to the test. Yester-
day morning, an hour forever memorable in the history of eggs,
the implements necessary for this great operation were all brought
out, – a heater, some gravy, some pepper, salt, and eggs. Behold
Madame de Lauzun, at first blushing and in a tremor, soon with
intrepid courage, breaking the eggs, beating them up in the pan,
turning them over, now to the right, now to the left, now up
and now down, with unexampled precision and success! Never
a more excellent dish eaten. » What laughter and gayety
in the group comprised in this little scene; and not long after,
what madrigals and allusions! Gayety here resembles a dancing
ray of sunlight; it flickers over all things, and reflects its grace
on every object.
(
was
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14449
THE DISARMING OF CHARACTER
W"
From «The Ancient Régime. Copyright 1876, by Henry Holt
HEN the affections and the intellect combine their refine-
ments, they produce masterpieces; and these, like the art,
the refinements, and the society which surrounds them,
possess a charm unsurpassed by anything except their own fra-
gility.
The reason is, that the better adapted men are to a certain
situation, the less prepared are they for the opposite situation.
The habits and faculties which serve them in the previous condi-
tion become prejudicial to them in the new one. In acquiring
talents adapted to tranquil times, they lose those suited to times
of agitation; reaching the extreme of feebleness at the same time
with the extreme of urbanity. The more polished an aristocracy
becomes, the weaker it becomes; and when no longer possessing
the power to please, it no longer possesses the strength to struggle.
And yet in this world, we must struggle if we would live. In
humanity as in nature, empire belongs to force. Every creature
that loses the art and energy of self-defense becomes so much
more certainly a prey, according as its brilliancy, imprudence, and
even gentleness, deliver it over in advance to the gross appetites
roaming around it. Where find resistance in characters formed
by the habits we have just described ? To defend ourselves, we
must first of all look carefully around us, see and foresee, and
provide for danger. How could they do this, living as they did ?
Their circle is too narrow and too carefully inclosed. Confined
to their castles and mansions, they see only those of their own
sphere, they hear only the echo of their own ideas, they imagine
that there is nothing beyond: the public seems to consist of two
hundred persons.
Moreover, disagreeable truths are not admitted into a drawing-
room, especially when of personal import; an idle fancy there
becoming a dogma because it becomes conventional. Here
accordingly we find those who, already deceived by the limita-
tions of their accustomed horizon, fortify their delusion still
more by delusions about their fellow-men. They comprehend
nothing of the vast world which envelops their little world: they
are incapable of entering into the sentiments of a bourgeois, or
of a villager; they have no conception of the peasant as he is, but
XXIV–904
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
as they would like him to be. The idyl is in fashion, and no one
dares to dispute it: any other supposition would be false because
it would be disagreeable; and as the drawing-rooms have decided
that all will go well, all must go well. Never was a delusion
more complete and more voluntary. The Duc d'Orléans offers
to wager a hundred louis that the States-General will dissolve
without accomplishing anything, not even abolishing the lettre-de-
cachet. After the demolition has begun, and yet again after it is
finished, they will form opinions no more accurate. They have
no idea of social architecture: they know nothing about either
its materials, its proportions, or its harmonious balance; they
have had no hand in it, they have never worked at it. They
are entirely ignorant of the old building in which they occupy the
first story. They are not qualified to calculate either its pressure
or its resistance. They conclude finally that it is better to let
the thing tumble in, and that the restoration of the edifice in
their behalf will follow its own course, and that they will return
to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for them, and freshly
gilded, to begin over again the pleasant conversation which an
accident - some tumult in the street — had interrupted. Clear-
sighted in society, they are obtuse in politics. They examine
everything by the artificial light of candles; they are disturbed
and bewildered in the powerful light of open day. The eyelid
has grown stiff through age. The organ so long bent on the
petty details of one refined life no longer takes in the popular
life of the masses, and in the new sphere into which it is sud-
denly plunged its refinement becomes the source of its blind-
ness.
Nevertheless action is necessary, for danger is seizing them
by the throat. But the danger is of an ignoble species, while
their education has provided them with no arms suitable for ward-
ing it off. They have learned how to fence but not how to box.
They are still the sons of those at Fontenoy, who instead of
being the first to fire, courteously raised their hats and ad- .
dressed their English antagonists, “No, gentlemen: fire your-
selves. ” Being the slaves of good-breeding, they are not free in
their movements. Numerous acts, and those the most important,
– those of a sudden, vigorous, and rude stamp;- are opposed
to the respect a well-bred man entertains for others, or at least
to the respect which he owes to himself. They do not consider
these allowable among themselves; they do not dream of their
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14451
.
being allowed: and the higher their position, the more their rank
fetters them. When the royal family sets out for Varennes, the
accumulated delays by which they are lost are the result of
etiquette. Madame de Touzel insists on her place in the carriage
to which she is entitled as governess of the Children of France.
The King, on arriving, is desirous of conferring the marshal's
baton on M. de Bouillé; and after running to and fro to obtain
a baton, he is obliged to borrow that of the Duc de Choiseul.
The Queen cannot dispense with a traveling dressing-case, and
one has to be made large enough to contain every imaginable
implement from a warming-pan to a silver porridge-dish, with
other dishes besides; and as if there were no shifts to be had in
Brussels, there had to be a complete outfit in this line for herself
and her children.
A narrow fidelity, humanity in its own despite [quand même],
the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity, pro-
found ignorance, the nullity or rigidity of the understanding
and of the will, are still greater with the princes than with the
nobles. All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak.
They have not the physical superiority that can master it, the
vulgar charlatanism which can charm it away, the tricks of a
Scapin to throw it off the scent, the bull's neck, the mounte-
bank's gestures, the stentor's lungs,- in short, the resources of
the energetic temperament and of animal cunning, alone capable
of diverting the rage of the unchained brute. To secure wres-
tlers of this stamp they seek for three or four men of a different
race and education: men who have suffered and roamed about;
a brutal plebeian like the Abbé Maury; a colossal and dirty satyr
like Mirabeau, a bold and prompt adventurer like that Dumouriez,
who at Cherbourg, when through the feebleness of the Duc de
Beuvron the stores of grain were given up and the riot began,
hooted at and nearly cut to pieces suddenly sees the keys of the
storehouse in the hands of a Dutch sailor, and yelling to the mob
that it was betrayed through a foreigner having got hold of the
keys, himself jumps down from the railing, seizes the keys, and
hands them to the officer of the guard, saying to the people: "I
am your father,- I am the man to be responsible for the store-
house! ”
To intrust oneself with porters and brawlers, to be collared
by a political club, to improvise on the highways, to bark louder
than the barkers, to fight with the fists or a cudgel, as with the
>
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HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
gay youths of a later day, against brutes and lunatics incapable
of employing other arguments, and who must be answered in
the same vein, to mount guard over the Assembly, to act as
volunteer constable, to spare neither one's own hide nor that of
others, to be one of the people to face the people,-are simple
and effectual proceedings, but so vulgar as to appear to them dis-
gusting The idea of resorting to such means never enters their
head: they neither know how, nor do they care, to make use of
their hands in such business. They are skilled only in the duel; ;
and almost immediately the brutality of opinion, by means of
assaults, stops the way to polite combats. Their arms, the shafts
.
of the drawing-room, epigrams, witticisms, songs, parodies, and
other needle-thrusts, are impotent against the popular bull.
This character lacks both roots and resources; through super-
refinement it has become etiolated; nature, impoverished by cult-
ure, is incapable of the transformations by which we are renewed
and survive. An all-powerful education has repressed, mollified,
enfeebled instinct itself. About to die, they experience none of
the reactions of blood and rage, the universal and sudden restora-
tion of the forces, the murderous spasm, the blind irresistible need
of striking those who strike them. If a gentleman is arrested
.
in his own house by a Jacobin, we never find him splitting his
head open. They allow themselves to be taken, going quietly
to prison: to make an uproar would be bad taste; it is neces-
sary above all things to remain what they are,— well-bred people
of society. In prison both men and women dress themselves
with great care, pay each other visits, and keep up a drawing-
room: it may be at the end of a corridor, in the light of three
or four candles; but here they circulate jests, compose madri-
gals, sing songs, and pride themselves on being as gallant, as
gay, and as gracious as ever: need people be morose and ill-
behaved because accident has consigned them to a poor inn?
They preserve their dignity and their smile before their judges
and on the cart; the women, especially, mount the scaffold with
the ease and serenity characteristic of an evening entertainment.
It is the supreme characteristic of good-breeding, erected into
a unique duty, and become to this aristocracy a second nature,
which is found in its virtues as well as in its vices, in its facul-
ties as well as in its impotencies, in its prosperity as at its fall,
and which adorns it even in the death to which it conducts.
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14453
THE TALMUD
BY MAX MARGOLIS
W
HAT is the Talmud ?
Let us enter a Jewish school of Babylonia some time
after the year 325 A. D. We may betake ourselves to Pum-
baditha, whose academy, now almost a century old, is presided over
by Abaye; or to the young school at Mahoza, where we shall meet its
founder, Raba. A third and still older seat of learning, the Soran
Academy, we shall find deserted: after half a century it will resume
its former place as Pumbaditha's rival. The attendance at the schools
is largest in March and August, the months preceding Passover and
Tabernacles. The scholars follow their occupations as husbandmen
and tradesmen during the rest of the year: they are not all young
men— some leave their families behind them: they all study for the
sake of study, which is a duty incumbent upon every Israelite. In
Pumbaditha poor scholars are supported from a public fund, to which
the communities throughout the land contribute. What is the subject
of the scholar's study? what the topic of the master's discourse ? what
are the points of controversy between the two rival scholarchs ? Do
they differ on some grave doctrinal question, similar to that which
engaged the attention of the bishops convened at Nicæa? are the dis-
cussions of Abaye and Raba in any way to be compared to the con-
troversy between Arius and Athanasius ? When teacher and disciple
equally are worn out by the heavy matter of daily school routine, and
a change of subject is desirable for the purpose of relaxation, then
you may perhaps hear a remark bearing on theology in our sense of
the word; or if you choose a rather dignified term, a metaphysical
observation. But then the rabbis are altogether in their lighter
mood: the discipline is lax, mental concentration gives way to free
rambling; wise maxims and witty epigrams, fantastic exposition of
Scripture and facetious stories, succeed each other in playful connec-
tion; the jargon of the school with its Hebrew terminology yields to
the easier flow of the Aramaic vernacular; in the language of every-
day life a remark is sometimes made which is hardly consonant with
the dignity of the class-room. These pleasant intermezzos seldom
last long: a return is made to the sterner subjects of the school pro-
gramme. The chief subject-matter of the schools is the interpreta-
tion of the Mishna. What is the Mishna ?
There are scholars who claim that the Mishna, as we know it at
present, was not committed to writing until some two centuries after
## p. 14454 (#648) ##########################################
14454
THE TALMUD
the time at which we have set out to study the Talmudic schools.
But there is good ground for holding to the traditional opinion which
makes the codification of the Mishna coincident with its redaction,
which is placed at the end of the second century. For our present
purposes we may, on the strength of this assumption, expect to find
on the master's desk at least — manuscripts are expensive — a volumi-
nous book of the size of an ordinary pulpit Bible. As we turn its
leaves, we shall be told that it is divided into six parts or orders,
which are named:- Seeds (laws pertaining to agriculture: 1. g. , the
law which prescribes that the corner of the field must not be reaped
but left to the poor; the prohibition to sow mixed seeds; the regula-
tions concerning tithes and sacerdotal revenues, the seventh year,
etc. ); Holy Seasons (Sabbath and festivals: the kinds of labor which
must be abstained from on these days are minutely specified; the
sacrificial and ritual ceremonies peculiar to each holiday); Women
(laws pertaining to betrothal, marriage, and divorce; the Levirate, or
marriage of the deceased brother's wife; prohibited marriages; the
woman suspected of adultery: in this part are also treated vows in
general and the Nazirate in particular); Damages (civil and criminal
laws; courts and proceedings of jurisdiction: in the treatise called
«Fathers,” the ethical sayings of the doctors of the Mishna are
recorded); Sacred Things (laws on things sacred; i. l. , dedicated to
the temple: the slaughtering of animals for ordinary purposes; what is
fit to be eaten — kasher, and what is not — terepha); Matters of Purity
(euphemistically for Impurity, Levitical impurity; resulting, e. g. , from
contact with a dead body, unclean animals, etc. ). Each subject is
handled, as a rule, in a special treatise: thus we have the treatise
Sabbath, New Year, The Day (i. e. , the Day of Atonement), Marriage
Contracts, Bills of Divorce, etc. Each treatise is divided into chapters,
and each chapter into paragraphs. The statements of law or practice
are usually unaccompanied by argumentation; neither is the source
indicated. Divergent opinions are quite frequently recorded; the
scholars are then mentioned by name, otherwise no name is given
at all.
The Mishna then, we see, is a code of laws embracing the civic
and religious life of the Jew. From our hasty survey of the subjects
treated in this law-book, we gather that in the main the Mishna is
meant to reproduce in an expanded form the laws and provisions
contained in the Law,-i. e. , the Pentateuch. Mishna, indeed, means
Repetition; it is an expansion of the original law whence it derives
its authority. If the subject-matter of the Mishna appears trivial to
a modern reader, much in the legal portions of the Pentateuch is
equally foreign to our tastes. Perhaps we shall object not so much
to the matter, which is largely Scriptural, as to the manner in which
it is elaborated. The prohibition to work on the Sabbath day is
## p. 14455 (#649) ##########################################
THE TALMUD
14455
Biblical: it is reported in the Pentateuch that a man was stoned to
death in the wilderness for gathering wood on the day of rest. The
Mishna devotes over twenty chapters to a minute specification of
what is prohibited labor and what is not. One chapter enumerates
all articles of apparel which a woman may wear on the Sabbath. It
is not sufficient to lay down the general rule, that the prohibition to
carry burdens on the Sabbath does not apply to wearing apparel or
jewelry worn for ornament; but a catalogue of articles of woman's
toilet is given, showing that the rabbis had an eye for the trinkets of
their wives and daughters. Costly jewelry must not be worn on the
Sabbath: the women are in the habit of taking their expensive
ornaments off in order to show them to their friends; while it is
permitted to wear ornaments, they must not be handled. The Penta-
teuch commands that the lost property of a neighbor, if found, be
restored to him, or be kept until he claims it. According to the rab-
bis, certain things may be retained by the finder without making an
effort to ascertain their owner: 1. g. , when a thing has no mark or
distinguishing feature by which it may be identified, it is assumed
that the owner has no thought of regaining it, and willingly re-
nounces his ownership; the article becomes public property, to be the
possession of the first person that finds it. A list of articles is given
which come under the category of unrecognizable things. The prin-
ciple itself is scarcely given expression to. Very often a case is
gone through in all possible and impossible ramifications: the love of
detail, of definiteness, strongly manifests itself everywhere; the cases
are in most instances the invention of the schools, only a few coming
from real life.
It is fortunate, said some one facetiously, that the synagogue, un-
like the church, has no bells; otherwise we should have had a treatise
in the Mishna called Bells, setting forth the proper metal and size of
a bell, and how often it should be rung, and what benediction should
be pronounced over the ringing, and whether the benediction should
be said before or after the ringing, etc. For the horn which is
blown on New Year's Day, or the booth in which the Israelite is to
dwell on the festival which derives its name from it, or the scroll
from which the book of Esther is read on the feast of Purim, are
treated with exactly this kind of detail.
The Mishna is a law-book replete with tedious matter. Yet it is
not without its interesting parts, which deservedly claim the attention
of even a modern reader. Occasionally amidst the rubbish of form-
alism, lies hidden a pithy remark betraying the spiritual and moral
insight of the schoolmen. The treatise “Fathers” — the object of
which is to record in chronological order the doctors of the Mishna
is in its entirety an ethical treatise, for the reason that incidentally
»
## p. 14456 (#650) ##########################################
14456
THE TALMUD
((
to every name is attached an ethical maxim reported as coming from
that scholar. These occasional glimpses of other than purely formal-
istic interests, these sayings on the most important spiritual concerns
of man, on God and duty, may fitly find a place in the world's liter-
ature. For their sake we are ready to overlook the unattractive sur-
roundings in which they are found.
Take for instance the treatise Benedictions, with which the code
commences. While we again painfully notice the undue attention
given to the minutiæ of etiquette and the ceremonial side of prayer,
- at what time and up to what time certain prayers may be recited,
what should be the posture of the body, which benediction must pre-
cede another, and what is to be done when an error is made in the
recital, —we find there the warning: “He who maketh his prayer a
matter of duty to be performed at set times, his prayer is not pure
devotion. ” One must bless God for the evil as well as for the
good. ” Elsewhere we are told that he who serves God out of fear
is inferior to him who is pious out of love. « Be not as slaves who
minister to their master with a view to recompense; but be as slaves
who serve their master without the expectation of reward. ” « Better
is an hour of repentance and good works in this world, than all the
life of the world to come. ” On the other hand: «Better is one
hour of spiritual bliss in the world to come. than all the life of this
world. ” « This world is like a vestibule before the world which is to
come: prepare thyself at the vestibule, that thou mayest be admitted
into the hall. ” “Be bold as a leopard, and swift as an eagle, and
fleet as a hart, and strong as a lion to do the will of thy Father
which is in heaven. ” «Consider three things and thou wilt not fall
into the hands of transgression: know what is above thee,-a seeing
eye, and a hearing ear, and all thy deeds written in a book. ” The
rabbis exhort to love work and hate lordship. "Idleness leads to
insanity. ” Study is an obligation for everybody. It is a matter of
private effort; it is not an heirloom which may be bequeathed by
father to son. “Say not, When I have leisure I will study: perchance
thou mayest not have leisure. ” “He who learns as a lad, is like to
ink written on fresh paper; and he who learns when old, is like to
ink written on used paper. ” “He who learns from the young is like
one that eats unripe grapes, and drinks wine fresh from the vat; but
he who learns from the old is like one who eats ripened grapes, and
drinks old wine. ” And yet he is wise who learns from every man.
« There are four characters in those who sit at the feet of the wise,
- a sponge, a funnel, a strainer, and a sieve: a sponge, which sucks
up all; a funnel, which lets in here and lets out there; a strainer,
which lets out the wine and keeps back the dregs; a sieve, which
lets out the flour and keeps back the pollard. ” “Excellent is study
together with worldly business, for the practice of them both puts
D)
## p. 14457 (#651) ##########################################
THE TALMUD
14457
»
>>
away sinful thoughts; all study without work must fail at length and
lead to sin. ” “This is the path of study: A morsel with salt shalt
thou eat, thou shalt drink water by measure, and thou shalt sleep
upon the ground, and live a life of painfulness, and in the Law
shalt thou labor. ” «Seek not greatness for thyself, and desire not
honor. Practice more than thou learnest: not learning but doing is
the groundwork. And lust not for the table of kings; for thy table
is greater than their table, and thy crown greater than their crown,
and faithful is thy taskmaster who will pay thee the wage of thy
work. ” So is the young scholar addressed. “Thy own deeds shall
bring thee nigh or put thee afar. ” “If I am not for myself, who is
for me ? » “In the place where there are no men, endeavor to be a
man. ” “Yet lean not to thine own understanding. ” “He is mighty
who subdues his passion. ” « There are three crowns,- the crown of
scholarship, and the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty;
but the crown of a good name surpasses them all. ” “He is rich who
is contented with his lot. "Judge not thy friend until thou comest
into his place. ” “Let the honor of thy fellow-man be as dear to
thee as thine own. ” “Despise no man, and carp at no thing; for thou
wilt find that there is not a man that hath not his hour, and not a
thing that hath not its place. ” “Do not conciliate thy friend in the
hour of his passion, nor console him in the hour when his dead is
laid out before him; and strive not to see him in the hour of his
disgrace. ” “Let thy house be opened wide, and let the needy be
thy household. ” “Receive every man with a cheerful countenance. ”
"Pray for the welfare of the State, since but for fear thereof we
had swallowed each his neighbor alive. ” There is something to be
learned from this dry law-book after all.
The exposition and interpretation of the Mishna constitutes the
main activity of the Jewish schools of Babylonia, whether at Sora or
Pumbaditha, whether at Mahoza or Naresh. Talmud is a term that
signified first a method, before it became the name of a book. The
Mishna, as we may remember, contains little of discussion or argu-
mentation: it is, in the majority of cases, content to state a point of
law in the form of a simple statement, without in the least indicating
the process by which the law was evolved. The Talmudic method is
principally concerned with retracing the law, as stated in the Mishna,
to its source; which it is assumed, sometimes wrongly, must be found
in Scripture. There is not a sentence in the Mishna which escapes
the notice of the expounder: the reason of every remark must be
established. « Wherefrom ? whence all this? ” is a constant query.
If the origin is found to lie in Scripture, the exegesis of the Bible
word is quite often forced, unnatural. It is true the rabbis are not
always very earnest about their fine deductions. Much
ascribed to the love of casuistry and mental gymnastics. They are
»
may be
## p. 14458 (#652) ##########################################
14458
THE TALMUD
none.
always glad to find problems. Complications are artificially created
where there are
Where a law is deduced from a principle
stated in the Mishna, that principle is now elaborated with exactness
and finesse. Again, laws of various kinds and on different subjects
are subsumed under new aspects, new principles. The work of
abstract systematization begins: another opportunity for mental labor.
The Talmudic scholar never confines himself to the law on hand: he
compares it with others, finds similarities and dissimilarities, repeti-
tions and contradictions. A clever scholar will find some discrimi-
nating point by which the seeming repetition will be removed. The
text of the Mishna itself often presents difficulties. The language
is concise, at times enigmatical. Then the Mishna is not the work
of one hand. Its several parts are welded together, as a rule very
adroitly, yet occasionally in a manner to create incongruities or
ambiguities. It is the business of the Talmudic method to remove
these difficulties. On the other hand, the Mishna must be adapted to
new conditions and situations. New laws are formulated, which as
a rule are deduced from a principle discovered behind the concrete
decisions recorded in the law-book. As the work of the Talmudic
schools goes on from generation to generation it becomes more com-
plicated. The discussions of one generation are handed down to the
next, and become the basis of all subsequent operations. Conflicting
opinions become more frequent. One scholar is found to be at
variance with another. Sometimes it is discovered that contradictory
opinions are ascribed to one and the same scholar.
As far as pos-
sible, the rabbis try to reconcile contradictions. They are of too
peaceful a nature to allow contradictions to stand. These are in out-
line the characteristics of scholastic activity as it clustered around
the Mishna. Let us listen for a moment to a Talmudic discussion.
The first paragraph of the third chapter of the treatise Synhedrion
is on the programme. The Mishna is read. «In civil suits the court
must consist of three persons. Each party chooses one judge, while
the third is chosen by the two judges. According to Rabbi Meir, the
third is chosen by both parties. Rabbi Meir gives each party the
right to object to the other party's judge. The other scholars grant
this right only in the case when it is proved that the judge is
related to one party or morally disqualified; no judge who is morally
qualified or licensed can be objected to. According to Rabbi Meir,
each party may object to the other party's witnesses: according to
the other scholars, only when it is proved that the witnesses are
related or morally disqualified; witnesses morally qualified cannot be
ruled out of court. ” So far the Mishna. Now begins the discussion.
It is asked, How can any one object to a (competent, duly licensed)
judge? Rabbi Meir has in mind Syrian courts; i. 1. , judges who are
known as incompetent. It follows from this answer that Rabbi Meir
## p. 14459 (#653) ##########################################
THE TALMUD
14459
would not allow any one to object to competent judges. It is pointed
out that Rabbi Meir's colleagues in the Mishna state it as their
opinion that competent judges cannot be objected to; hence Rabbi
Meir apparently is of the opinion that all judges, even such as are
competent, may be objected to. The original question remains: How
can Rabbi Meir reasonably hold such an opinion? The master meets
the objection by resorting to textual emendation. In the opinion of
Rabbi Meir's colleagues he proposes to read, “No judge who is mor-
ally qualified can be objected to, for he is just as good as one duly
licensed. ” According to this reading, of course, Rabbi Meir as well is
of the opinion that licensed judges cannot be objected to: the con-
troversy turns about judges who are not licensed, but are otherwise
morally qualified; according to Rabbi Meir they may be rejected by
one of the parties, while according to the other scholars they are just
as good as licensed judges, and are therefore not open to objection.
One of the students quotes an extraneous source according to which
Rabbi Meir's colleagues, in the course of argumentation with him,
made the remark: You will not allow any one to object to a duly
licensed judge! It follows that the controversy really turned about
licensed judges. The original question remains: How can Rabbi
Meir reasonably hold such an opinion? The master who holds that
Rabbi Meir never permitted the rejection of duly licensed judges
claims that the student misquoted his source, and that the remark of
Rabbi Meir's colleagues should read, “You will not allow any one
to object to a judge who is accepted by a community as competent
(although not duly licensed)! ” The master even quotes a source of
equal authority as that adduced by the student where Rabbi Meir is
made to say, “One has a right to object until a judge is chosen who
is duly licensed. ” But the students are none the less unyielding.
They reason by analogy, and bid the master look at the second part
of the paragraph just read. Witnesses, they say, unless related or
morally disqualified, are fully competent, as much as a judge who is
duly licensed is in his sphere. Yet Rabbi Meir grants the litigants
the privilege of rejecting witnesses not related and morally qualified.
Hence Rabbi Meir is evidently of the opinion that even a licensed
judge may be rejected. The master is ready with his reply. He
quotes an older Talmudic scholar, who, when reading our paragraph,
remarked: "Is it possible that a holy mouth should have said such
a thing (that fully qualified witnesses may be rejected)? Read –
(witness (each party may object to the other party's witness, single
witness). Accordingly two witnesses, provided they are qualified,
cannot be rejected, even according to the opinion of Rabbi Meir;
therefore in the analogous case, a judge who is duly licensed will
be declared by Rabbi Meir not less than his colleagues to be above
rejection. Rabbi Meir's statement was made to read: “Each party
(
(
## p. 14460 (#654) ##########################################
14460
THE TALMUD
con.
may object to the other party's single witness. ” The students pro-
ceed to inquire whether a single witness is not insufficient per se,
independently of the objections of a litigant.
But I think we have had enough of the atmosphere of Talmudic
scholasticism and casuistry. We have heard enough to bear out our
general conception of Talmudic methods. Suffice it to say that the
scholastic work of several generations is finally codified. Multiply
discussions like the one which we listened to, by the number of para-
graphs and the smaller divisions contained in the Mishna, and you
will have a pretty fair conception of the bulk as well as of the char-
acter of the matter of the Talmud — the Talmud as a book. The
Babylonian (there is an earlier Palestinian recension embodying the
less developed Palestinian scholasticism) Talmud was probably edited
in the fifth century of our era. The work of the schools continued,
with the written Talmud now as the basis of their operations. The
Talmud was excerpted and commented upon. The best commentary
on the Talmud was written by a French Jew in the eleventh cen-
tury. In the same century an Italian Jew composed a Talmudic lexi-
Upon the Talmud are based the codes of Maimonides (twelfth
century) and Karo (sixteenth century). The Talmud is still studied
in the schools of eastern Europe, and is regarded by orthodox Jews
as authoritative.
It would be unjust to convey the idea that nothing except hair-
splitting discussions, on topics more or less out of touch with modern
interests, are to be found in the Talmud. There is enough in the
Talmud to justify its claim to the attention of the student of general
literature. It is by no means merely a literary curiosity to be picked
up at some antiquary's, marveled at, and then laid down and con-
signed to the dust of oblivion. The students of the Babylonian
schools, whose work the Talmud records, occasionally give expression
to a weighty maxim bearing witness to deep spiritual insight. The
casuistry engages all their attention; but it is not the whole of their
mental store that is exhibited in their dry discussions. They delve
deeply into the mysteries of the Law; the rich treasures of spiritual
life are equally known to them. They discourse on competent judges
and witnesses, on what may be eaten and what may not, on what it
is permitted to do on certain occasions and what is not permitted;
but they are equally experts on the inward concerns of man, and
speak wise words on lofty subjects. Listen to some of their obiter
dicta : – "Be in attendance upon the wise; for even the ordinary con-
versation of a scholar is well worth a study. ” “He who supports
himself by his own labor is greater than he who fears heaven; for
by thine own name they will call thee, and in thine own place they
will seat thee, and give thee of what is thine own: but he who
looks forward to the table of his fellow - the world, as it were, lies
## p. 14461 (#655) ##########################################
THE TALMUD
14461
dark before him, and his life is no life.
and pastoral operas, has a theatre built in the chateau; a great
crowd of company resorts to it from Bourbon-Lancy and Mou-
lins: after rehearsing twelve weeks the little girl, with a quiver
## p. 14442 (#636) ##########################################
14442
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
of arrows and blue wings, plays the part of Cupid, and the cos-
tume is so becoming she is allowed to wear it for common during
the entire day for nine months. To finish the business they send
for a dancing-fencing master, and still wearing the Cupid cos-
tume, she takes lessons in fencing and in deportment. “The
«
entire winter is devoted to playing comedy and tragedy. ” Sent
out of the room after dinner, she is brought in again only to
play on the harpsichord or to declaim the monologue of Alzire
before a numerous assembly. Undoubtedly such extravagances
are not customary: but the spirit of education is everywhere the
same; that is to say, in the eyes of parents there is but one
intelligible and rational existence,- that of society,— even for
children; and the attentions bestowed on these are solely with a
view to introduce them into it or to prepare them for it.
Even in the last years of the ancient régime, little boys have
their hair powdered, “a pomatumed chignon [bourse), ringlets, and
curls”; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill,
and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies' hands with
the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a
whalebone waist; her large hoop-petticoat supports a skirt covered
with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of
false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with
plumes, and so high that frequently the chin is half-way down
to her feet ”; sometimes they put rouge on her face.
She is a
miniature lady, and she knows it: she is fully up in her part,
without effort or inconvenience, by force of habit; the unique,
the perpetual instruction she gets is that on her deportment: it
may be said with truth that the fulcrum of education in this
country is the dancing-master. They could get along with him
without any others; without him the others were of no use. For
without him, how could people go through easily, suitably, and
gracefully, the thousand and one actions of daily life,- walking,
sitting down, standing up, offering the arm, using the fan,
listening and smiling, before eyes so experienced and before such
a refined public? This is to be the great thing for them when
they become men and women, and for this reason it is the
thing of chief importance for them as children. Along with
graces of attitude and of gesture, they already have those of the
mind and of expression. Scarcely is their tongue loosened when
they speak the polished language of their parents. The latter
amuse themselves with them and use them as pretty dolls; the
C
## p. 14443 (#637) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14443
preaching of Rousseau, which during the last third of the last
century brought children into fashion, produces no other effect.
They are made to recite their lessons in public, to perform in
proverbs, to take parts in pastorals. Their sallies are encouraged.
They know how to turn a compliment, to invent a clever or
affecting repartee, to be gallant, sensitive, and even spirituelle.
The little Duc d'Angoulême, holding a book in his hand, receives
Suffren, whom he addresses thus: "I was reading Plutarch and
his Illustrious Men. You could not have entered more àpropos. ”
The children of M. de Sabran, a boy and a girl, one eight, and
the other nine, having taken lessons from the comedians Sainval
and Larive, come to Versailles to play before the King and Queen
in Voltaire's Oreste'; and on the little fellow being interrogated
about the classic authors, he replies to a lady, the mother of three
charming girls, “Madame, Anacreon is the only poet I can think
of here! ” Another, of the same age, replies to a question of
Prince Henry of Prussia with an agreeable impromptu in verse.
To cause witticisms, insipidities, and mediocre verse to germinate
in a brain eight years old - what a triumph for the culture of
the day! It is the last characteristic of the régime which after
having stolen man away from public affairs, from his own affairs,
from marriage, from the family, hands him over, with all his sen-
timents and all his faculties, to social worldliness,- he and all
that belong to him. Below him fine ways and forced politeness
prevail, even with his servants and tradesmen. A Frontin has a
gallant unconstrained air, and he turns a compliment. An abigail
needs only to be a kept mistress to become a lady. A shoe-
maker is monsieur in black," who says to a mother on salut-
ing the daughter, Madame, a charming young person, and I am
more sensible than ever of the value of your kindness; ” on which
the young girl, just out of a convent, takes him for a suitor and
blushes scarlet. Undoubtedly less unsophisticated eyes would dis-
tinguish the difference between this pinchbeck louis d'or and a
genuine one; but their resemblance suffices to show the universal
action of the central mint — machinery which stamps both with
the same effigy, the base metal and the refined gold.
»
a
A society which obtains such ascendency must possess some
charm: in no country indeed, and in no age, has so perfect
a social art rendered life so agreeable. Paris is the schoolhouse
of Europe, - a school of urbanity to which the youth of Russia,
## p. 14444 (#638) ##########################################
14444
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
Germany, and England resort to become civilized. Lord Ches-
terfield in his letters never tires of reminding his son of this,
and of urging him into these drawing-rooms, which will remove
"his Cambridge rust. ” Once familiar with them they are never
abandoned; or if one is obliged to leave them, one always sighs
for them. Nothing is comparable,” says Voltaire, to the
genial life one leads there, in the bosom of the arts and of
calm and refined voluptuousness; strangers and monarchs have
preferred this repose — so agreeably occupied and so enchanting -
to their own countries and thrones. The heart there softens and
melts away like aromatics slowly dissolving in moderate heat,
evaporating in delightful perfumes. ” Gustavus III. , beaten by
the Russians, declares that he will pass his last days in Paris in
a house on the boulevards; and this is not merely compliment-
ary, for he sends for plans and an estimate. A supper or an
evening entertainment brings people two hundred leagues away.
Some friends of the Prince de Ligne “leave Brussels after break-
fast, reach the opera in Paris just in time to see the curtain rise,
and after the spectacle is over, return immediately to Brussels,
traveling all night. ”
Of this delight, so eagerly sought, we have only imperfect
copies; and we are obliged to revive it intellectually. It consists,
in the first place, in the pleasure of living with perfectly polite
people: there is no enjoyment more subtle, more lasting, more
inexhaustible. The self-love of man being infinite, intelligent
people are always able to produce some refinement of atten-
tion to gratify it. Worldly sensibility being infinite, there is no
imperceptible shade of it permitting indifference. After all, man
is still the greatest source of happiness or of misery to man;
and in those days the ever-flowing fountain brought to him
sweetness instead of bitterness. Not only was it essential not to
offend, but it was essential to please: one was expected to lose
:
sight of oneself in others, to be always cordial and good-humored,
to keep one's own vexations and grievances in one's own breast,
to spare others melancholy ideas, and to supply them with cheer-
ful ideas. "Was any one old in those days ? It is the Revolu-
tion which brought old age into the world. Your grandfather,
my child, was handsome, elegant, neat, gracious, perfumed, play-
ful, amiable, affectionate, and good-tempered, to the day of his
death. People then knew how to live and how to die; there
was no such thing as troublesome infirmities. If any one had the
## p. 14445 (#639) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14445
gout, he walked along all the same and made no faces; people
well brought up concealed their sufferings. There was none of
that absorption in business which spoils a man inwardly and
dulls his brain. People knew how to ruin themselves without
letting it appear, like good gamblers who lose their money with-
out showing uneasiness or spite. A man would be carried half
dead to a hunt. It was thought better to die at a ball or at
the play, than in one's bed between four wax candles and horrid
men in black. People were philosophers: they did not assume
to be austere, but often were so without making a display of
it. If one was discreet, it was through inclination, and without
pedantry or prudishness. People enjoyed this life, and when the
hour of departure came they did not try to disgust others with
living. The last request of my old husband was that I would
survive him as long as possible, and live as happily as I could. ”
[So discourses her beautiful grandmother to George Sand. ]
DRAWING-ROOM LIFE
From “The Ancient Régime. Copyright 1876, by Henry Holt
O *
NE can very well understand this kind of pleasure in a sum.
mary way, but how is it to be made apparent ? Taken by
themselves the pastimes of society are not to be described:
they are too ephemeral; their charm arises from their accompani-
ments. A narrative of them would be but tasteless dregs, — does
the libretto of an opera give any idea of the opera itself? If
the reader would revive for himself this vanished world, let him
seek for it in those works that have preserved its externals or
its accent; and first in the pictures and engravings of Watteau,
Fragonard, and the Saint-Aubins, and then in the novels and dra-
mas of Voltaire and Marivaux, and even in Collé and Crébillon
fils: then do we see the breathing figures and hear their voices.
What bright, winning, intelligent faces, beaming with pleasure
and with the desire to please! What ease in bearing and gest-
ure! What piquant grace in the toilet, in the smile, in vivacity
of expression, in the control of the flute-like voice, in the
coquetry of hidden meanings! How involuntarily we stop to look
and listen! Attractiveness is everywhere, — in the small spirituelle
heads, in the slender hands, in the rumpled attire, in the pretty
## p. 14446 (#640) ##########################################
14446
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
features, in the demeanor. The slightest gesture, a pouting or
mutinous turn of the head, a plump little wrist peering from its
nest of lace, a yielding waist bent over an embroidery frame, the
rapid rustling of an opening fan, is a feast for the eyes and the
intellect. It is indeed all daintiness, a delicate caress for delicate
senses, extending to the external decoration of life, to the sinu-
ous outlines, the showy drapery, and the refinements of comfort
in the furniture and architecture.
Fill your imagination with these accessories and with these
figures, and you will take as much interest in their amusements
as they did. In such a place and in such company it suffices to
be together to be content. Their indolence is no burden to
them, for they sport with existence. At Chanteloup, the Duc de
Choiseul, in disgrace, finds the fashionable world flocking to see
him; nothing is done, and yet no hours of the day are unoccu-
pied. “The duchess has only two hours' time to herself, and
these two hours are devoted to her toilet and her letters: the
calculation is a simple one,- she gets up at eleven, breakfasts
at noon, and this is followed by conversation, which lasts three
or four hours; dinner comes at six, after which there is play
and the reading of the memoirs of Madame de Maintenon. ”
Ordinarily “the company remains together until two o'clock in
the morning. ” Intellectual freedom is complete. There is no
confusion, no anxiety. They play whist and tric-trac in the
afternoon and faro in the evening. “They do to-day what they
did yesterday, and what they will do to-morrow; the dinner-
supper is to them the most important affair in life, and their
only complaint in the world is of their digestion. Time goes
so fast I always fancy that I arrived only the evening before. ”
Sometimes they get up a little race, and the ladies are disposed
to take part in it, "for they are all very spry and able to run
around the drawing-room five or six times every day. ” But they
prefer indoors to the open air; in these days true sunshine con-
sists of candle-light, and the finest sky is a painted ceiling, - is
there any other less subject to inclemencies, or better adapted to
conversation and merriment? They accordingly chat and jest,
in words with present friends, and by letters with absent friends.
They lecture old Madame du Deffand, who is too lively, and
whom they style the little girl”; the young duchess, tender
and sensible, is her grandmama. ” As for "grandpapa,” M. de
Choiseul, “a slight cold keeping him in bed, he has fairy stories
»
(
## p. 14447 (#641) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14447
read to him all day long: a species of reading to which we are
all given; we find them as probable as modern history. Do not
imagine that he is unoccupied. He has had a tapestry frame put
up in the drawing-room; at which he works, I cannot say with
the greatest skill, but at least with the greatest assiduity.
Now our delight is in flying a kite: grandpapa has never seen
this sight, and he is enraptured with it. ” The pastime, in itself,
is nothing; it is resorted to according to opportunity or the taste
of the hour, - now taken up and now let alone,- and the abbé
soon writes: "I do not speak about our races, because we race no
more; nor of our readings, because we do not read; nor of our
promenades, because we do not go out. What then do we do?
Some play billiards, others dominoes, and others backgammon.
We weave, we ravel, and we unravel. Time pushes us on, and
we pay him back. ”
Other circles present the same spectacle. Every occupation
being an amusement, a caprice or an impulse of fashion brings
one into favor.
At present it is unraveling; every white hand
at Paris, and in the châteaux, being busy in undoing trimmings,
epaulettes, and old stuffs, to pick out the gold and silver threads.
They find in this employment the semblance of economy, an ap-
pearance of occupation,-in any event something to keep them in
countenance. On a circle of ladies being formed, a big unravel-
ing bag in green taffeta is placed on the table, which belongs to
the lady of the house; immediately all the ladies call for their
bags, and voilà les laquais en l'air. ”
It is all the rage.
They
unravel every day and several hours in the day; some derive
from it a hundred louis d'or per annum. The gentlemen are
expected to provide the materials for the work: the Duc de
Lauzun, accordingly, gives to Madame de V— a harp of nat-
ural size, covered with gold thread; an enormous golden fleece,
brought as a present from the Comte de Lowenthal, and which
cost two or three thousand francs, brings, picked to pieces, five
or six hundred francs. But they do not look into matters so
closely. Some employment is essential for idle hands, some
manual outlet for nervous activity; a humorous petulance breaks
out in the middle of the pretended work. One day, when about
going out, Madame de R- observes that the gold fringe on
her dress would be capital for unraveling; whereupon, with a
dash, she cuts one of the fringes off. Ten women suddenly
surround a man wearing fringes, pull off his coat, and put his
fringes and laces into their bags; just as if a bold flock of
(
## p. 14448 (#642) ##########################################
14448
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
as
)
tomtits, fluttering and chattering in the air, should suddenly dart
on a jay to pluck off its feathers: thenceforth a man who enters
a circle of women stands in danger of being stripped alive.
All this pretty world has the same pastimes, the men
well as the women. Scarcely a man can be found without some
drawing-room accomplishment, some trifling way of keeping his
mind and hands busy, and of filling up the vacant hour: almost
all make rhymes, or act in private theatricals; many of them are
musicians and painters of still-life subjects. M. de Choiseul, as
we have just seen, works at tapestry; others embroider or make
sword-knots. M. de Francueil is a good violinist, and makes vio-
lins himself; and besides this he is “watchmaker, architect, turner,
painter, locksmith, decorator, cook, poet, music-composer, and he
embroiders remarkably well. ” In this general state of inactivity
it is essential « to know how to be pleasantly occupied in behalf
of others as well as in one's own behalf. ” Madame de Pompadour
is a musician, an actress, a painter, and an engraver. Madame
Adelaide learns watchmaking, and plays on all instruments from
a horn to the jew's-harp; not very well, it is true, but as well as a
queen can sing, whose fine voice is never more than half in tune.
But they make no pretensions, The thing is to amuse oneself
and nothing more; high spirits and the amenities of the hour
cover all. Rather read this capital fact of Madame de Lauzun at
Chanteloup:—“Do you know," writes the abbé, that nobody
possesses in a higher degree one quality which you would never
suspect of her, - that of preparing scrambled eggs? This talent
has been buried in the ground, - she cannot recall the time she
acquired it; I believe that she had it at her birth. Accident
made it known, and immediately it was put to the test. Yester-
day morning, an hour forever memorable in the history of eggs,
the implements necessary for this great operation were all brought
out, – a heater, some gravy, some pepper, salt, and eggs. Behold
Madame de Lauzun, at first blushing and in a tremor, soon with
intrepid courage, breaking the eggs, beating them up in the pan,
turning them over, now to the right, now to the left, now up
and now down, with unexampled precision and success! Never
a more excellent dish eaten. » What laughter and gayety
in the group comprised in this little scene; and not long after,
what madrigals and allusions! Gayety here resembles a dancing
ray of sunlight; it flickers over all things, and reflects its grace
on every object.
(
was
## p. 14449 (#643) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14449
THE DISARMING OF CHARACTER
W"
From «The Ancient Régime. Copyright 1876, by Henry Holt
HEN the affections and the intellect combine their refine-
ments, they produce masterpieces; and these, like the art,
the refinements, and the society which surrounds them,
possess a charm unsurpassed by anything except their own fra-
gility.
The reason is, that the better adapted men are to a certain
situation, the less prepared are they for the opposite situation.
The habits and faculties which serve them in the previous condi-
tion become prejudicial to them in the new one. In acquiring
talents adapted to tranquil times, they lose those suited to times
of agitation; reaching the extreme of feebleness at the same time
with the extreme of urbanity. The more polished an aristocracy
becomes, the weaker it becomes; and when no longer possessing
the power to please, it no longer possesses the strength to struggle.
And yet in this world, we must struggle if we would live. In
humanity as in nature, empire belongs to force. Every creature
that loses the art and energy of self-defense becomes so much
more certainly a prey, according as its brilliancy, imprudence, and
even gentleness, deliver it over in advance to the gross appetites
roaming around it. Where find resistance in characters formed
by the habits we have just described ? To defend ourselves, we
must first of all look carefully around us, see and foresee, and
provide for danger. How could they do this, living as they did ?
Their circle is too narrow and too carefully inclosed. Confined
to their castles and mansions, they see only those of their own
sphere, they hear only the echo of their own ideas, they imagine
that there is nothing beyond: the public seems to consist of two
hundred persons.
Moreover, disagreeable truths are not admitted into a drawing-
room, especially when of personal import; an idle fancy there
becoming a dogma because it becomes conventional. Here
accordingly we find those who, already deceived by the limita-
tions of their accustomed horizon, fortify their delusion still
more by delusions about their fellow-men. They comprehend
nothing of the vast world which envelops their little world: they
are incapable of entering into the sentiments of a bourgeois, or
of a villager; they have no conception of the peasant as he is, but
XXIV–904
## p. 14450 (#644) ##########################################
14450
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
as they would like him to be. The idyl is in fashion, and no one
dares to dispute it: any other supposition would be false because
it would be disagreeable; and as the drawing-rooms have decided
that all will go well, all must go well. Never was a delusion
more complete and more voluntary. The Duc d'Orléans offers
to wager a hundred louis that the States-General will dissolve
without accomplishing anything, not even abolishing the lettre-de-
cachet. After the demolition has begun, and yet again after it is
finished, they will form opinions no more accurate. They have
no idea of social architecture: they know nothing about either
its materials, its proportions, or its harmonious balance; they
have had no hand in it, they have never worked at it. They
are entirely ignorant of the old building in which they occupy the
first story. They are not qualified to calculate either its pressure
or its resistance. They conclude finally that it is better to let
the thing tumble in, and that the restoration of the edifice in
their behalf will follow its own course, and that they will return
to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for them, and freshly
gilded, to begin over again the pleasant conversation which an
accident - some tumult in the street — had interrupted. Clear-
sighted in society, they are obtuse in politics. They examine
everything by the artificial light of candles; they are disturbed
and bewildered in the powerful light of open day. The eyelid
has grown stiff through age. The organ so long bent on the
petty details of one refined life no longer takes in the popular
life of the masses, and in the new sphere into which it is sud-
denly plunged its refinement becomes the source of its blind-
ness.
Nevertheless action is necessary, for danger is seizing them
by the throat. But the danger is of an ignoble species, while
their education has provided them with no arms suitable for ward-
ing it off. They have learned how to fence but not how to box.
They are still the sons of those at Fontenoy, who instead of
being the first to fire, courteously raised their hats and ad- .
dressed their English antagonists, “No, gentlemen: fire your-
selves. ” Being the slaves of good-breeding, they are not free in
their movements. Numerous acts, and those the most important,
– those of a sudden, vigorous, and rude stamp;- are opposed
to the respect a well-bred man entertains for others, or at least
to the respect which he owes to himself. They do not consider
these allowable among themselves; they do not dream of their
## p. 14451 (#645) ##########################################
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
14451
.
being allowed: and the higher their position, the more their rank
fetters them. When the royal family sets out for Varennes, the
accumulated delays by which they are lost are the result of
etiquette. Madame de Touzel insists on her place in the carriage
to which she is entitled as governess of the Children of France.
The King, on arriving, is desirous of conferring the marshal's
baton on M. de Bouillé; and after running to and fro to obtain
a baton, he is obliged to borrow that of the Duc de Choiseul.
The Queen cannot dispense with a traveling dressing-case, and
one has to be made large enough to contain every imaginable
implement from a warming-pan to a silver porridge-dish, with
other dishes besides; and as if there were no shifts to be had in
Brussels, there had to be a complete outfit in this line for herself
and her children.
A narrow fidelity, humanity in its own despite [quand même],
the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity, pro-
found ignorance, the nullity or rigidity of the understanding
and of the will, are still greater with the princes than with the
nobles. All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak.
They have not the physical superiority that can master it, the
vulgar charlatanism which can charm it away, the tricks of a
Scapin to throw it off the scent, the bull's neck, the mounte-
bank's gestures, the stentor's lungs,- in short, the resources of
the energetic temperament and of animal cunning, alone capable
of diverting the rage of the unchained brute. To secure wres-
tlers of this stamp they seek for three or four men of a different
race and education: men who have suffered and roamed about;
a brutal plebeian like the Abbé Maury; a colossal and dirty satyr
like Mirabeau, a bold and prompt adventurer like that Dumouriez,
who at Cherbourg, when through the feebleness of the Duc de
Beuvron the stores of grain were given up and the riot began,
hooted at and nearly cut to pieces suddenly sees the keys of the
storehouse in the hands of a Dutch sailor, and yelling to the mob
that it was betrayed through a foreigner having got hold of the
keys, himself jumps down from the railing, seizes the keys, and
hands them to the officer of the guard, saying to the people: "I
am your father,- I am the man to be responsible for the store-
house! ”
To intrust oneself with porters and brawlers, to be collared
by a political club, to improvise on the highways, to bark louder
than the barkers, to fight with the fists or a cudgel, as with the
>
## p. 14452 (#646) ##########################################
14452
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
gay youths of a later day, against brutes and lunatics incapable
of employing other arguments, and who must be answered in
the same vein, to mount guard over the Assembly, to act as
volunteer constable, to spare neither one's own hide nor that of
others, to be one of the people to face the people,-are simple
and effectual proceedings, but so vulgar as to appear to them dis-
gusting The idea of resorting to such means never enters their
head: they neither know how, nor do they care, to make use of
their hands in such business. They are skilled only in the duel; ;
and almost immediately the brutality of opinion, by means of
assaults, stops the way to polite combats. Their arms, the shafts
.
of the drawing-room, epigrams, witticisms, songs, parodies, and
other needle-thrusts, are impotent against the popular bull.
This character lacks both roots and resources; through super-
refinement it has become etiolated; nature, impoverished by cult-
ure, is incapable of the transformations by which we are renewed
and survive. An all-powerful education has repressed, mollified,
enfeebled instinct itself. About to die, they experience none of
the reactions of blood and rage, the universal and sudden restora-
tion of the forces, the murderous spasm, the blind irresistible need
of striking those who strike them. If a gentleman is arrested
.
in his own house by a Jacobin, we never find him splitting his
head open. They allow themselves to be taken, going quietly
to prison: to make an uproar would be bad taste; it is neces-
sary above all things to remain what they are,— well-bred people
of society. In prison both men and women dress themselves
with great care, pay each other visits, and keep up a drawing-
room: it may be at the end of a corridor, in the light of three
or four candles; but here they circulate jests, compose madri-
gals, sing songs, and pride themselves on being as gallant, as
gay, and as gracious as ever: need people be morose and ill-
behaved because accident has consigned them to a poor inn?
They preserve their dignity and their smile before their judges
and on the cart; the women, especially, mount the scaffold with
the ease and serenity characteristic of an evening entertainment.
It is the supreme characteristic of good-breeding, erected into
a unique duty, and become to this aristocracy a second nature,
which is found in its virtues as well as in its vices, in its facul-
ties as well as in its impotencies, in its prosperity as at its fall,
and which adorns it even in the death to which it conducts.
## p. 14453 (#647) ##########################################
14453
THE TALMUD
BY MAX MARGOLIS
W
HAT is the Talmud ?
Let us enter a Jewish school of Babylonia some time
after the year 325 A. D. We may betake ourselves to Pum-
baditha, whose academy, now almost a century old, is presided over
by Abaye; or to the young school at Mahoza, where we shall meet its
founder, Raba. A third and still older seat of learning, the Soran
Academy, we shall find deserted: after half a century it will resume
its former place as Pumbaditha's rival. The attendance at the schools
is largest in March and August, the months preceding Passover and
Tabernacles. The scholars follow their occupations as husbandmen
and tradesmen during the rest of the year: they are not all young
men— some leave their families behind them: they all study for the
sake of study, which is a duty incumbent upon every Israelite. In
Pumbaditha poor scholars are supported from a public fund, to which
the communities throughout the land contribute. What is the subject
of the scholar's study? what the topic of the master's discourse ? what
are the points of controversy between the two rival scholarchs ? Do
they differ on some grave doctrinal question, similar to that which
engaged the attention of the bishops convened at Nicæa? are the dis-
cussions of Abaye and Raba in any way to be compared to the con-
troversy between Arius and Athanasius ? When teacher and disciple
equally are worn out by the heavy matter of daily school routine, and
a change of subject is desirable for the purpose of relaxation, then
you may perhaps hear a remark bearing on theology in our sense of
the word; or if you choose a rather dignified term, a metaphysical
observation. But then the rabbis are altogether in their lighter
mood: the discipline is lax, mental concentration gives way to free
rambling; wise maxims and witty epigrams, fantastic exposition of
Scripture and facetious stories, succeed each other in playful connec-
tion; the jargon of the school with its Hebrew terminology yields to
the easier flow of the Aramaic vernacular; in the language of every-
day life a remark is sometimes made which is hardly consonant with
the dignity of the class-room. These pleasant intermezzos seldom
last long: a return is made to the sterner subjects of the school pro-
gramme. The chief subject-matter of the schools is the interpreta-
tion of the Mishna. What is the Mishna ?
There are scholars who claim that the Mishna, as we know it at
present, was not committed to writing until some two centuries after
## p. 14454 (#648) ##########################################
14454
THE TALMUD
the time at which we have set out to study the Talmudic schools.
But there is good ground for holding to the traditional opinion which
makes the codification of the Mishna coincident with its redaction,
which is placed at the end of the second century. For our present
purposes we may, on the strength of this assumption, expect to find
on the master's desk at least — manuscripts are expensive — a volumi-
nous book of the size of an ordinary pulpit Bible. As we turn its
leaves, we shall be told that it is divided into six parts or orders,
which are named:- Seeds (laws pertaining to agriculture: 1. g. , the
law which prescribes that the corner of the field must not be reaped
but left to the poor; the prohibition to sow mixed seeds; the regula-
tions concerning tithes and sacerdotal revenues, the seventh year,
etc. ); Holy Seasons (Sabbath and festivals: the kinds of labor which
must be abstained from on these days are minutely specified; the
sacrificial and ritual ceremonies peculiar to each holiday); Women
(laws pertaining to betrothal, marriage, and divorce; the Levirate, or
marriage of the deceased brother's wife; prohibited marriages; the
woman suspected of adultery: in this part are also treated vows in
general and the Nazirate in particular); Damages (civil and criminal
laws; courts and proceedings of jurisdiction: in the treatise called
«Fathers,” the ethical sayings of the doctors of the Mishna are
recorded); Sacred Things (laws on things sacred; i. l. , dedicated to
the temple: the slaughtering of animals for ordinary purposes; what is
fit to be eaten — kasher, and what is not — terepha); Matters of Purity
(euphemistically for Impurity, Levitical impurity; resulting, e. g. , from
contact with a dead body, unclean animals, etc. ). Each subject is
handled, as a rule, in a special treatise: thus we have the treatise
Sabbath, New Year, The Day (i. e. , the Day of Atonement), Marriage
Contracts, Bills of Divorce, etc. Each treatise is divided into chapters,
and each chapter into paragraphs. The statements of law or practice
are usually unaccompanied by argumentation; neither is the source
indicated. Divergent opinions are quite frequently recorded; the
scholars are then mentioned by name, otherwise no name is given
at all.
The Mishna then, we see, is a code of laws embracing the civic
and religious life of the Jew. From our hasty survey of the subjects
treated in this law-book, we gather that in the main the Mishna is
meant to reproduce in an expanded form the laws and provisions
contained in the Law,-i. e. , the Pentateuch. Mishna, indeed, means
Repetition; it is an expansion of the original law whence it derives
its authority. If the subject-matter of the Mishna appears trivial to
a modern reader, much in the legal portions of the Pentateuch is
equally foreign to our tastes. Perhaps we shall object not so much
to the matter, which is largely Scriptural, as to the manner in which
it is elaborated. The prohibition to work on the Sabbath day is
## p. 14455 (#649) ##########################################
THE TALMUD
14455
Biblical: it is reported in the Pentateuch that a man was stoned to
death in the wilderness for gathering wood on the day of rest. The
Mishna devotes over twenty chapters to a minute specification of
what is prohibited labor and what is not. One chapter enumerates
all articles of apparel which a woman may wear on the Sabbath. It
is not sufficient to lay down the general rule, that the prohibition to
carry burdens on the Sabbath does not apply to wearing apparel or
jewelry worn for ornament; but a catalogue of articles of woman's
toilet is given, showing that the rabbis had an eye for the trinkets of
their wives and daughters. Costly jewelry must not be worn on the
Sabbath: the women are in the habit of taking their expensive
ornaments off in order to show them to their friends; while it is
permitted to wear ornaments, they must not be handled. The Penta-
teuch commands that the lost property of a neighbor, if found, be
restored to him, or be kept until he claims it. According to the rab-
bis, certain things may be retained by the finder without making an
effort to ascertain their owner: 1. g. , when a thing has no mark or
distinguishing feature by which it may be identified, it is assumed
that the owner has no thought of regaining it, and willingly re-
nounces his ownership; the article becomes public property, to be the
possession of the first person that finds it. A list of articles is given
which come under the category of unrecognizable things. The prin-
ciple itself is scarcely given expression to. Very often a case is
gone through in all possible and impossible ramifications: the love of
detail, of definiteness, strongly manifests itself everywhere; the cases
are in most instances the invention of the schools, only a few coming
from real life.
It is fortunate, said some one facetiously, that the synagogue, un-
like the church, has no bells; otherwise we should have had a treatise
in the Mishna called Bells, setting forth the proper metal and size of
a bell, and how often it should be rung, and what benediction should
be pronounced over the ringing, and whether the benediction should
be said before or after the ringing, etc. For the horn which is
blown on New Year's Day, or the booth in which the Israelite is to
dwell on the festival which derives its name from it, or the scroll
from which the book of Esther is read on the feast of Purim, are
treated with exactly this kind of detail.
The Mishna is a law-book replete with tedious matter. Yet it is
not without its interesting parts, which deservedly claim the attention
of even a modern reader. Occasionally amidst the rubbish of form-
alism, lies hidden a pithy remark betraying the spiritual and moral
insight of the schoolmen. The treatise “Fathers” — the object of
which is to record in chronological order the doctors of the Mishna
is in its entirety an ethical treatise, for the reason that incidentally
»
## p. 14456 (#650) ##########################################
14456
THE TALMUD
((
to every name is attached an ethical maxim reported as coming from
that scholar. These occasional glimpses of other than purely formal-
istic interests, these sayings on the most important spiritual concerns
of man, on God and duty, may fitly find a place in the world's liter-
ature. For their sake we are ready to overlook the unattractive sur-
roundings in which they are found.
Take for instance the treatise Benedictions, with which the code
commences. While we again painfully notice the undue attention
given to the minutiæ of etiquette and the ceremonial side of prayer,
- at what time and up to what time certain prayers may be recited,
what should be the posture of the body, which benediction must pre-
cede another, and what is to be done when an error is made in the
recital, —we find there the warning: “He who maketh his prayer a
matter of duty to be performed at set times, his prayer is not pure
devotion. ” One must bless God for the evil as well as for the
good. ” Elsewhere we are told that he who serves God out of fear
is inferior to him who is pious out of love. « Be not as slaves who
minister to their master with a view to recompense; but be as slaves
who serve their master without the expectation of reward. ” « Better
is an hour of repentance and good works in this world, than all the
life of the world to come. ” On the other hand: «Better is one
hour of spiritual bliss in the world to come. than all the life of this
world. ” « This world is like a vestibule before the world which is to
come: prepare thyself at the vestibule, that thou mayest be admitted
into the hall. ” “Be bold as a leopard, and swift as an eagle, and
fleet as a hart, and strong as a lion to do the will of thy Father
which is in heaven. ” «Consider three things and thou wilt not fall
into the hands of transgression: know what is above thee,-a seeing
eye, and a hearing ear, and all thy deeds written in a book. ” The
rabbis exhort to love work and hate lordship. "Idleness leads to
insanity. ” Study is an obligation for everybody. It is a matter of
private effort; it is not an heirloom which may be bequeathed by
father to son. “Say not, When I have leisure I will study: perchance
thou mayest not have leisure. ” “He who learns as a lad, is like to
ink written on fresh paper; and he who learns when old, is like to
ink written on used paper. ” “He who learns from the young is like
one that eats unripe grapes, and drinks wine fresh from the vat; but
he who learns from the old is like one who eats ripened grapes, and
drinks old wine. ” And yet he is wise who learns from every man.
« There are four characters in those who sit at the feet of the wise,
- a sponge, a funnel, a strainer, and a sieve: a sponge, which sucks
up all; a funnel, which lets in here and lets out there; a strainer,
which lets out the wine and keeps back the dregs; a sieve, which
lets out the flour and keeps back the pollard. ” “Excellent is study
together with worldly business, for the practice of them both puts
D)
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14457
»
>>
away sinful thoughts; all study without work must fail at length and
lead to sin. ” “This is the path of study: A morsel with salt shalt
thou eat, thou shalt drink water by measure, and thou shalt sleep
upon the ground, and live a life of painfulness, and in the Law
shalt thou labor. ” «Seek not greatness for thyself, and desire not
honor. Practice more than thou learnest: not learning but doing is
the groundwork. And lust not for the table of kings; for thy table
is greater than their table, and thy crown greater than their crown,
and faithful is thy taskmaster who will pay thee the wage of thy
work. ” So is the young scholar addressed. “Thy own deeds shall
bring thee nigh or put thee afar. ” “If I am not for myself, who is
for me ? » “In the place where there are no men, endeavor to be a
man. ” “Yet lean not to thine own understanding. ” “He is mighty
who subdues his passion. ” « There are three crowns,- the crown of
scholarship, and the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty;
but the crown of a good name surpasses them all. ” “He is rich who
is contented with his lot. "Judge not thy friend until thou comest
into his place. ” “Let the honor of thy fellow-man be as dear to
thee as thine own. ” “Despise no man, and carp at no thing; for thou
wilt find that there is not a man that hath not his hour, and not a
thing that hath not its place. ” “Do not conciliate thy friend in the
hour of his passion, nor console him in the hour when his dead is
laid out before him; and strive not to see him in the hour of his
disgrace. ” “Let thy house be opened wide, and let the needy be
thy household. ” “Receive every man with a cheerful countenance. ”
"Pray for the welfare of the State, since but for fear thereof we
had swallowed each his neighbor alive. ” There is something to be
learned from this dry law-book after all.
The exposition and interpretation of the Mishna constitutes the
main activity of the Jewish schools of Babylonia, whether at Sora or
Pumbaditha, whether at Mahoza or Naresh. Talmud is a term that
signified first a method, before it became the name of a book. The
Mishna, as we may remember, contains little of discussion or argu-
mentation: it is, in the majority of cases, content to state a point of
law in the form of a simple statement, without in the least indicating
the process by which the law was evolved. The Talmudic method is
principally concerned with retracing the law, as stated in the Mishna,
to its source; which it is assumed, sometimes wrongly, must be found
in Scripture. There is not a sentence in the Mishna which escapes
the notice of the expounder: the reason of every remark must be
established. « Wherefrom ? whence all this? ” is a constant query.
If the origin is found to lie in Scripture, the exegesis of the Bible
word is quite often forced, unnatural. It is true the rabbis are not
always very earnest about their fine deductions. Much
ascribed to the love of casuistry and mental gymnastics. They are
»
may be
## p. 14458 (#652) ##########################################
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THE TALMUD
none.
always glad to find problems. Complications are artificially created
where there are
Where a law is deduced from a principle
stated in the Mishna, that principle is now elaborated with exactness
and finesse. Again, laws of various kinds and on different subjects
are subsumed under new aspects, new principles. The work of
abstract systematization begins: another opportunity for mental labor.
The Talmudic scholar never confines himself to the law on hand: he
compares it with others, finds similarities and dissimilarities, repeti-
tions and contradictions. A clever scholar will find some discrimi-
nating point by which the seeming repetition will be removed. The
text of the Mishna itself often presents difficulties. The language
is concise, at times enigmatical. Then the Mishna is not the work
of one hand. Its several parts are welded together, as a rule very
adroitly, yet occasionally in a manner to create incongruities or
ambiguities. It is the business of the Talmudic method to remove
these difficulties. On the other hand, the Mishna must be adapted to
new conditions and situations. New laws are formulated, which as
a rule are deduced from a principle discovered behind the concrete
decisions recorded in the law-book. As the work of the Talmudic
schools goes on from generation to generation it becomes more com-
plicated. The discussions of one generation are handed down to the
next, and become the basis of all subsequent operations. Conflicting
opinions become more frequent. One scholar is found to be at
variance with another. Sometimes it is discovered that contradictory
opinions are ascribed to one and the same scholar.
As far as pos-
sible, the rabbis try to reconcile contradictions. They are of too
peaceful a nature to allow contradictions to stand. These are in out-
line the characteristics of scholastic activity as it clustered around
the Mishna. Let us listen for a moment to a Talmudic discussion.
The first paragraph of the third chapter of the treatise Synhedrion
is on the programme. The Mishna is read. «In civil suits the court
must consist of three persons. Each party chooses one judge, while
the third is chosen by the two judges. According to Rabbi Meir, the
third is chosen by both parties. Rabbi Meir gives each party the
right to object to the other party's judge. The other scholars grant
this right only in the case when it is proved that the judge is
related to one party or morally disqualified; no judge who is morally
qualified or licensed can be objected to. According to Rabbi Meir,
each party may object to the other party's witnesses: according to
the other scholars, only when it is proved that the witnesses are
related or morally disqualified; witnesses morally qualified cannot be
ruled out of court. ” So far the Mishna. Now begins the discussion.
It is asked, How can any one object to a (competent, duly licensed)
judge? Rabbi Meir has in mind Syrian courts; i. 1. , judges who are
known as incompetent. It follows from this answer that Rabbi Meir
## p. 14459 (#653) ##########################################
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14459
would not allow any one to object to competent judges. It is pointed
out that Rabbi Meir's colleagues in the Mishna state it as their
opinion that competent judges cannot be objected to; hence Rabbi
Meir apparently is of the opinion that all judges, even such as are
competent, may be objected to. The original question remains: How
can Rabbi Meir reasonably hold such an opinion? The master meets
the objection by resorting to textual emendation. In the opinion of
Rabbi Meir's colleagues he proposes to read, “No judge who is mor-
ally qualified can be objected to, for he is just as good as one duly
licensed. ” According to this reading, of course, Rabbi Meir as well is
of the opinion that licensed judges cannot be objected to: the con-
troversy turns about judges who are not licensed, but are otherwise
morally qualified; according to Rabbi Meir they may be rejected by
one of the parties, while according to the other scholars they are just
as good as licensed judges, and are therefore not open to objection.
One of the students quotes an extraneous source according to which
Rabbi Meir's colleagues, in the course of argumentation with him,
made the remark: You will not allow any one to object to a duly
licensed judge! It follows that the controversy really turned about
licensed judges. The original question remains: How can Rabbi
Meir reasonably hold such an opinion? The master who holds that
Rabbi Meir never permitted the rejection of duly licensed judges
claims that the student misquoted his source, and that the remark of
Rabbi Meir's colleagues should read, “You will not allow any one
to object to a judge who is accepted by a community as competent
(although not duly licensed)! ” The master even quotes a source of
equal authority as that adduced by the student where Rabbi Meir is
made to say, “One has a right to object until a judge is chosen who
is duly licensed. ” But the students are none the less unyielding.
They reason by analogy, and bid the master look at the second part
of the paragraph just read. Witnesses, they say, unless related or
morally disqualified, are fully competent, as much as a judge who is
duly licensed is in his sphere. Yet Rabbi Meir grants the litigants
the privilege of rejecting witnesses not related and morally qualified.
Hence Rabbi Meir is evidently of the opinion that even a licensed
judge may be rejected. The master is ready with his reply. He
quotes an older Talmudic scholar, who, when reading our paragraph,
remarked: "Is it possible that a holy mouth should have said such
a thing (that fully qualified witnesses may be rejected)? Read –
(witness (each party may object to the other party's witness, single
witness). Accordingly two witnesses, provided they are qualified,
cannot be rejected, even according to the opinion of Rabbi Meir;
therefore in the analogous case, a judge who is duly licensed will
be declared by Rabbi Meir not less than his colleagues to be above
rejection. Rabbi Meir's statement was made to read: “Each party
(
(
## p. 14460 (#654) ##########################################
14460
THE TALMUD
con.
may object to the other party's single witness. ” The students pro-
ceed to inquire whether a single witness is not insufficient per se,
independently of the objections of a litigant.
But I think we have had enough of the atmosphere of Talmudic
scholasticism and casuistry. We have heard enough to bear out our
general conception of Talmudic methods. Suffice it to say that the
scholastic work of several generations is finally codified. Multiply
discussions like the one which we listened to, by the number of para-
graphs and the smaller divisions contained in the Mishna, and you
will have a pretty fair conception of the bulk as well as of the char-
acter of the matter of the Talmud — the Talmud as a book. The
Babylonian (there is an earlier Palestinian recension embodying the
less developed Palestinian scholasticism) Talmud was probably edited
in the fifth century of our era. The work of the schools continued,
with the written Talmud now as the basis of their operations. The
Talmud was excerpted and commented upon. The best commentary
on the Talmud was written by a French Jew in the eleventh cen-
tury. In the same century an Italian Jew composed a Talmudic lexi-
Upon the Talmud are based the codes of Maimonides (twelfth
century) and Karo (sixteenth century). The Talmud is still studied
in the schools of eastern Europe, and is regarded by orthodox Jews
as authoritative.
It would be unjust to convey the idea that nothing except hair-
splitting discussions, on topics more or less out of touch with modern
interests, are to be found in the Talmud. There is enough in the
Talmud to justify its claim to the attention of the student of general
literature. It is by no means merely a literary curiosity to be picked
up at some antiquary's, marveled at, and then laid down and con-
signed to the dust of oblivion. The students of the Babylonian
schools, whose work the Talmud records, occasionally give expression
to a weighty maxim bearing witness to deep spiritual insight. The
casuistry engages all their attention; but it is not the whole of their
mental store that is exhibited in their dry discussions. They delve
deeply into the mysteries of the Law; the rich treasures of spiritual
life are equally known to them. They discourse on competent judges
and witnesses, on what may be eaten and what may not, on what it
is permitted to do on certain occasions and what is not permitted;
but they are equally experts on the inward concerns of man, and
speak wise words on lofty subjects. Listen to some of their obiter
dicta : – "Be in attendance upon the wise; for even the ordinary con-
versation of a scholar is well worth a study. ” “He who supports
himself by his own labor is greater than he who fears heaven; for
by thine own name they will call thee, and in thine own place they
will seat thee, and give thee of what is thine own: but he who
looks forward to the table of his fellow - the world, as it were, lies
## p. 14461 (#655) ##########################################
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14461
dark before him, and his life is no life.
