Two phenomena signalized the beginning of the latest period in Jewish history: the lofty activity of Mendelssohn and the occurrence of the great French Revolution. The man stands for the spiritual emancipation of the Jews, the movement for their political emancipation. At bottom, these two phenomena were by no means the ultimate causes of the social and spiritual regeneration of the Jewish people. They were only the products of the more general causes that had effected a similar regeneration in all the peoples of Western Europe. The new currents, the abandonment of effete intellectual and social forms, the substitution of juster and more energetic principles, the protest against superstition and despotism--all these traits had a common origin, the resuscitation of reason and free thought, which dominated all minds without asking whether they belonged to Jew or to Christian. It might seem that the rejuvenation of the Jews had been consummated more rapidly than the rejuvenation of the other peoples. The latter had had two centuries, the period elapsing since the middle ages, that is, the period between the Reformation and the great Revolution, in which to prepare for a more rational and a more humane conduct of life. As for the Jews, their middle ages began much later, and ended later, almost on the eve of 1789, so that the revolution in their minds and their mode of life had to accomplish itself hastily, under the urgence of swiftly crowding events, by the omission of intermediate stages. But it must be taken into consideration that long before, in the Judeo-Hellenic and in the Arabic-Spanish period, the Jews had passed through their "century of reason." In spite of the intervening ages of suffering and gloom, the faculty of assimilating new principles had survived. For the descendants of Philo and Maimonides the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century was in part a repetition of a well-known historical process. They had had the benefit of a similar course of studies before, and, therefore, had no need to cram on the eve of the final examination.