Now Herder’s treatment of ancient literature rendered a lasting service despite his fundamental misconception. What James Sully calls Herder’s “excessive and sentimental interest in primitive human culture” prepared the way for the “genetic” theories of our time. He thoroughly realized the natural element in national poetry. He explained genius in terms of race. To him is due some part of the conception of a “Jewish culture,” as formulated by present-day Zionists of Ahad ha-‘Am’s school. It is rather curious that while, on the one hand, Herder’s theories helped national anti-Semitism, on the other hand, they gave suggestions to national Judaism. By laying undue stress on the natural, Herder exaggerated the national in the human spirit. In his early manhood Herder had thought of training as a physician. But he abandoned the idea because he could not endure the dissecting-room. When he came to discuss the world’s genius he used the scalpel freely enough. His gorge rose against cutting up the body, but he felt no reluctance to dissect the spirit. Earlier writers had overlooked the national element in the Bible. Herder saw in the Old Testament nothing but national songs. The thought often led him right. He strongly opposed, for instance, the mystic and allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs. To him it was a love poem, the purest, most delicate love poem of antiquity (“den reinsten und zartesten Liebesdichtung des Altertums”). Hebrew literature was national, but it revealed its nationality under unique conditions, for it was marked by the “poetic consciousness of God.” In all this Herder was magnificently right. But he could not leave well alone. In one of his latest essays he summed up the Hebrew poetry as distinguished indeed by religiosity, but also by simplicity (“kindliche Naivetä, Religiosität, Einfalt”). No term could be worse chosen. Hebrew poetry shows consummate art. If it conveys the sense of simplicity, it is because the poet’s art so thoroughly conceals its workings. Herder made aesthetically the same mistake as Wellhausen perpetrated theologically. According to Wellhausen, the prophets of the eighth century before the Christian era suddenly appeared as an utterly new phenomenon on the Hebraic horizon, whereas, in truth, by the time we reach Amos we have got to a very advanced stage in the religious history of Israel. So, too, is it with the biblical poetry. It is, even in its earliest fragments, such as the Song of Deborah, a highly cultivated form. “Simplicity” is the last word to apply to it. It is powerful, it is sincere, but it is not naive. The Greek athlete who conquered at the Olympic games was robust, but he had gone through a long process of training. Vigor is not synonymous with artlessness. Trench wrote a charming book on the “use of words.” An equally entertaining book could be compiled on the “misuse of words.” In such a book, a front place would be assignable to Herder’s “simplicity.”