The sudden transition from rabbinic scholasticism to the "Critical Philosophy" of Germany, and from the primitive existence of a Lithuanian Jew to the free life of an educated European, destroyed Maimon's mental equilibrium. He fell a prey to skepticism and unbelief, denying the foundations of all religion and morality, and led a disorderly life, which made his best friends turn from him. In his philosophic criticism, Maimon went much further than Kant. In 1790 he published in German "A Tentative Investigation of Transcendental Philosophy," and this book was followed by a number of writings dealing with metaphysics and logic. Kant, on reading his first book, made the remark: "No one among my opponents has grasped the essence of my system as profoundly as Maimon, nor are there altogether many men endowed with so refined and penetrating a mind in questions so abstract and complex." In 1792 Solomon Maimon published his "Autobiography" (_Lebensgeschichte_), a remarkable book, in which he vividly describes the conditions of life and the ideas prevalent among Polish Lithuanian Jews as well as his own sad Odyssey. The Autobiography made a profound impression upon educated Christians, among others on Goethe and Schiller. The last years of his life Maimon spent in Silesia, on the estate of his friend Count Kalkreuth, where he continued his philosophic studies. He died in 1800, and was buried in Glogau. During the last years of his life Maimon was completely estranged from Judaism. He contributed next to nothing to the enlightenment of his fellow-Jews, the only work written by him in Hebrew being an uncompleted commentary on Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed." Having escaped the realm of darkness, he no more returned thither. Nor perhaps was he able to do so without risking the same fate as Uriel Acosta. The time for cultural rejuvenation had not yet arrived for the Jews of Poland and Lithuania. Least of all could such a rejuvenation have been stimulated by the change in their external, political situation: the transfer of the bulk of the Jewish population from the power of disintegrating Poland to that of Russia, a country even less civilized and built upon the foundations of autocracy and serfdom. FOOTNOTES: [171] [See p. 46, n. 1, and p. 60, n. 1.] [172] [Generally pronounced _shammes_.] [173] See p. 107. [174] [_I. e._ military commander. Originally the title is found among the Cossacks; see p. 143, n. 1.] [175] [See p. 108, n. 1.] [176] See pp. 204 _et seq._ [177] ["Blessing of the Sacrifice," allusion to I Sam. ix. 13.] [178] Compare _Be'er ha-Gola_, "Well of the Exiles," by Moses Rivkes, who fled from Vilna during the massacre of 1655; _Magen Abraham_, "Shield of Abraham" [allusion to Gen. xv. 1], by Abel Gumbiner, Rosh-Yeshibah in Kalish, whose parents perished during the time of unrest, and many others.