Jewish literature contains within it enough ascetic elements to justify the conduct of our greatest men whose lives were one long‐continued self‐ denial and privation. “The Torah,” says the Talmud, “cannot be obtained unless a man is prepared to give his life for it,” or as the Talmud puts it, in another place, “if it be thy desire not to die, cease to live before thou diest.” This was the principle by which the Gaon’s life was actuated. And as he did not spare himself, he could not spare others. We could not expect him to act differently. The Scriptures tell us: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” But how is it with the man who never loved himself, who never gave a thought to himself, who never lived for himself, but only for what he considered to be his duty and his mission from God on earth? Such a man we cannot expect to spend his time on coaxing and caressing us. As to the charge of one‐sidedness at which I have hinted, if the giving up of everything else for the purpose of devoting oneself to a scholarly and saintly life is one‐sidedness, the Gaon must certainly bear this charge; but in a world where there are so many on the other side, we ought, I think, to be only too grateful to Providence for sending us from time to time great and strong one‐sided men, who, by their counterbalancing influence, bring God’s spoilt world to a certain equilibrium again. To appease my more tender readers, I should like only to say that there is no occasion at all for pitying Mrs. Gaon. It would be a miserable world indeed if a good digestion and stupidity were, as a certain author maintained, the only conditions of happiness. Saints are happy in their sufferings, and noble souls find their happiness in sacrificing themselves for these sufferers. Another severe feature in the life of the Gaon showed itself in his dispute with the Chassidim. I regret not to be able to enter here even into a brief account of the history of this struggle. I shall only take leave to say that I am afraid each party was right, the Gaon as well as the Chassidim; the latter, in attacking the Rabbis of their time, who mostly belonged to the casuistic schools, and in their intellectual pursuits almost entirely neglected the emotional side of religion; but none the less was the Gaon right in opposing a system which, as I have shown above, involved the danger of leading to a worship of men.