What is thus true of language in general has a concentrated truth in the forms of speech used in greetings. Let us compare these in a few languages, ancient and modern, and see if the fact be not so. We will begin with the most familiar, as it is the best and most enduring, type of the Semitic race--the Hebrew. The history of the Jews--at any rate as it is set forth in their own sacred Books--is pre-eminently the history of a race singled out by an overruling Power for the education of _conscience_. To this bear witness the laws of the Two Tables, and most of those other laws, purely ceremonial, whose apparent triviality in some particulars is at any rate a mode of symbolizing what was the main object of the Lawgiver--keeping the heart and conscience pure. To this bear witness the indignant denunciations of their prophets, as well as the impassioned pleadings to return to a better mind and keep the conscience unaccused--to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God." To this bear witness the plaints--the like of which no other ancient literature furnishes--of their royal Psalmist, the type of what was best and noblest in his race--plaints which mourned not so much outward adversity or physical suffering as the pain of a hurt conscience, a realization of guilt which threw a pall over all that else was bright--plaints which, as that secluded education in Palestine became handed down to posterity and diffused wherever the Old Testament found its way, have been adopted by humanity as the _de profundis_ of all hearts conscious of guilt. And what was the Hebrew's salutation as he met his brother or his friend? "Peace!" The inner life of the race could not be more clearly shown by volumes. With the Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the "blameless Ethiops," and there pass a week or two in revels. No chance of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego his _tete-a-tete_. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim seemed to be to have a jolly time of it. Man tanzt, man schwaetzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt: Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?