Not less melancholy was the spectacle presented by the so‐called men of “Enlightenment” (_Aufklärung_). They belonged chiefly to the rationalistic school of Mendelssohn, but they equalled their master neither in knowledge nor in moral character. It was an enlightenment without foundation in real scholarship, and did not lead to an ideal life, though again I must add that there were exceptions. These men were rather what Germans would term _Schöngeister_, a set of dilettanti who cared to study as little as possible, and to write as much as possible. They wrote bad grammars, superficial commentaries on the Bible, and terribly dull poems. Of this literature, with the exception of Erter’s _Watchman_,(30) there is scarcely a work that one would care to read twice. Most of them despised Rabbinism, but without understanding its noblest forms as they are to be traced in the Talmud and later Hebrew literature. They did not dislike Judaism, but the only Judaism they affected was one “which does not oppose itself to anything in particular”; or, as Heine would have described it, “Eine reinliche Religion.” In one respect these little men were great: in mutual admiration, which reached such a pitch that such titles as “Great Luminary,” “World‐famed Sage,” were considered altogether too insignificant and commonplace. I will now pass to the writings of Krochmal. It must be premised that Krochmal was not a voluminous author. All his writings, including a few letters which were published in various Hebrew periodicals, would scarcely occupy four hundred pages. Krochmal used to call himself “der ewige Student” (the perpetual pupil). He did not read books, nor study philosophical systems, with the object of writing books of his own on them. He read and studied in order that he might become a better and a wiser man. Besides, he did not think himself competent to judge on grave subjects, nor did he consider his judgment, even if he formed one, worthy of publication. He counselled his friends to be equally slow in publishing their views to the world. “Be not,” he wrote to a correspondent,—“be not hasty in forming your opinions before you have studied the literature of the subject with care and devotion. This is no easy matter, for no man can obtain any real knowledge of the Torah and philosophy unless he is prepared to give himself up in single‐hearted devotion to his studies.” Severe though he was to his friends, he was still more severe to himself. Though he had been collecting materials on subjects of Jewish history and philosophy from his early youth, it was not until he had endured much persuasion and pressure from his friends that he began to write down his thoughts in a connected form. We thus possess only one work from the pen of this author; but that work is the _Guide of the Perplexed of the Time_,(31) a posthumous book published in 1851, eleven years after Krochmal’s death. His work had been much interrupted by illness during the