More disquieting would be the contention, which the number of self-regarding maxims readily suggests, that the general moral tone of these proverbs is not merely normal but actually low. There is no denying the unblushing utilitarianism that at times crops out. It is said: _I (Wisdom) walk in the paths of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgement, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance and that I may fill their treasuries_ (Pr. 8^{21})--_The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord is riches and honour and life_ (Pr. 22^{4}). This sounds even more reprehensible than the famous definition of Christianity as “doing good for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” It seems suspiciously like doing good for the sake of the kingdoms of this earth! But, hear the defence. First it has already been urged that general judgments on the proverbs _as a whole_ require most careful handling, if they are to be even moderately fair: let the utilitarian sage bear his own sin; his brother who said, “Love covereth all transgressions,” ought not to be implicated in his fall. Secondly, there is the sensible, though not lofty, argument that since the Wise were dealing with men tempted to throw off even ordinary moral restraint in the burning desire to get all possible prosperity and enjoyment out of life, if they had pitched their key much higher it is very probable they would have received no hearing at all. Modern students of ethics are well aware that pleasure, however often it may accompany good conduct, cannot be made the motive for virtue. But the Wise were less sophisticated than ourselves, and it was therefore easy for them to make the mistake of expressing in too commercial a fashion their conviction that “honesty is the best policy”[72]; and even if they did sometimes over-emphasise the thought of external reward, we should remember that perhaps it was the only way to catch the ear of certain men and draw them back from the hot pursuit of Folly. The third point will be surprising to those who are not aware how late in Jewish history was the development of a worthy conception of immortality and the just judgment of the soul after death. Compared with the Christian, who starts from the belief that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”, and that the consequences of good or evil conduct reach onwards beyond the grave, the Wise-men of Israel were cruelly handicapped in their consideration of the moral problem. Oesterley with justice pleads in extenuation of Ben Sirach’s stress on the worldly advantages of Wisdom, “This is natural in a writer whose whole attention is concentrated on the present life, and who has nothing but the vaguest ideas about a life hereafter.”[73] Fourthly, the Wise were not conscious of their utilitarianism. Of course it is bad to be utilitarian at all, but it is better to be so unintentionally than deliberately. The ancients did not, could not, speak or write with that precise realisation of the