One hundred years ago, Hebrew was a purely philological and theological proposition. The knowledge of Hebrew had quite a different value from what it has today. To the Eastern Jew, Hebrew had the meaning of a holy tongue only; to the Western Jew, Hebrew was a sort of a cultural luxury which was very much appreciated as such, but had no national value. The love for Hebrew in the West, which, by the way, was stronger than we today imagine, smelled faintly of a museum. These conditions prevailed in the West for several centuries. In the East, however, conditions changed with kaleidoscopic rapidity. With the spread of the Haskalah eastward, Hebrew achieved another value altogether; it had a different function to perform. The adherents of the Haskalah used Hebrew not as a holy tongue, as did the orthodox, nor as a theological proposition, as did many of the Western Jews, but as a medium to spread culture among the Jews and to introduce European ideas in the ghetto. The Hebrew writer of the middle of the nineteenth century considered himself a sort of cultural missionary. The best means to enlighten the people and to counteract superstition was, at that time, Hebrew literature. By the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties, Hebrew experienced another transvaluation, chiefly because of the failure of the Haskalah and the awakening of the national spirit among the Jews. The writers of that time considered Hebrew no longer a means to an end--that is to say, an agency to spread culture among the Jews--but an object in itself. People began to realize that Hebrew is not only a linguistic theological proposition, as was thought at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but that it is the woof and warp of national culture. The Hebrew writers of the last third of the nineteenth century, consequently, began to speak of the Hebrew tongue as a certain culture and Hebrew ideas as the ideas of the Jewish people. In short, Hebrew became the national cultural force in contradistinction to the humanitarian cultural force that it was thought to be in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Hebrew writers of the Eighties and Nineties no longer considered themselves cultural missionaries of the Jews, as did the writers of the preceding generation, but rather as the representatives of Hebrew thought and Hebrew culture. The most conspicuous representative of this school of thought is Ahad Ha'am, the father and systematizer of Hebrew cultural nationalism. Ahad Ha'am himself witnessed the transition from cultural Hebrew to political Hebrew. Although about twenty years ago he was the embodiment of Hebrew thought, his school had to make room for another conception of Hebrew, a conception to which, we think, the future belongs. It is the national political conception of Hebrew in opposition to its purely cultural conception.