struggle after truth. It is rather an unfortunate thing that history is so much made up of parallels and contrasts that the historian or even the biographer cannot possibly point out the greatness of some men without touching, however slightly, on the smallness of others. It is only natural that every strong shining object should push the minor lights of its surroundings into the background and darken them. Thus, when we are speaking of the superiority of the Gaon, we cannot escape hinting at least at the shortcomings of his contemporaries, as well as of his predecessors. To indicate briefly in what this superiority consisted, I will premise here a few words from a _Responsum_ by one of his great predecessors, the Gaon Rabbi Hai.(46) Consulted by a student as to the meaning of certain mystical passages in the tractate _Chagigah_,(47) Rabbi Hai, in warning his correspondent not to expect from him a long philosophical dissertation, writes as follows: “Know that it never was our business to palliate matters and explain them in a way of which the author never could have thought. This is fashionable with other people, but our method is to explain the words of this or that authority in accordance with his own meaning. We do not pledge ourselves that this meaning is ‘right rule’ in itself, for there _do_ exist statements made by the old authorities that cannot be accepted as norm.” Thus far the words of the Gaon of the tenth century, which speak volumes. The Gaon of the eighteenth century followed the same course. All his efforts were directed to this point; namely, to find out the true meaning of the Mishnah, the true meaning of the Gemara,(48) the true meaning of the Gaonim, the true meaning of the great codifiers, and the true meaning of the commentators on the ancient Rabbinical literature. Whether this meaning would be acceptable to us mattered very little to him. His only object was to understand the words of his predecessors, and this he obtained, as we shall soon see, by the best critical means. This was the method of the Gaon; that of other scholars (at least of the great majority) was dictated by entirely different considerations. They would not suffer the idea that the great man could be wrong at times. To them, all that he said was “right rule.” Now suppose a great author like Maimonides had overlooked an important passage in the Talmud or any other statement by a great authority, the alternative remaining to them was either to explain away the passage of the Talmud or to give the words of Maimonides a strange meaning. This led originally to the famous method of the _Pilpul_ (casuistry), a kind of spiritual gymnastic, which R. Liva of Prague in the sixteenth century, and many others condemned as most pernicious to Judaism and leading to the decay of the study of the Torah.