We have had no doubt, at various periods, our mystic sects, which, influenced consciously or unconsciously by foreign ideas, have here turned aside more or less from the Jewish road. But the sect is only a temporary and partial phenomenon, pointing to some internal disease which affects the national life in a given period. Our history shows that the end of these sects is to die out, or to leave Judaism. Sects come and sects go, but Judaism remains for ever. This fundamental tendency of Israel to rise clear of “any likeness” in its religious and moral life is evident not only in relation to the religious and moral _ideal_, but also in relation to the religious and moral _goal_. There is no need to dilate on the well-worn truth that the Law of Judaism sees its goal not in the “salvation” of the individual man, but in the prosperity and perfection of the general body; that is to say, of the nation, and, in “the latter end of days,” of the whole human race—a collective idea which has no defined concrete form. In the most fruitful period of Judaism, the period of the Prophets and “the giving of the Law,” it had no clear idea on the subject of the survival of the soul and reward and punishment after death. All the enthusiasm of the Prophets and their disciples was derived not from this source, but from the conviction of their being children of “the chosen people,” which was entrusted by God (as they believed) with the mission of embodying religion and morality, in their highest form, in its national life. Even in later times, when the Babylonian exile had destroyed the nation’s freedom, and the desire for individual salvation had consequently come to play a part in the religious consciousness, the _highest_ good of Judaism still remained collective. Scholars will need no proof of this fact. For those who are not scholars it will be sufficient to examine the daily and festival prayer-books, in order to realise that only a small part of the prayers turns on the particular needs of the individual, while most deal with the concerns of the _nation_ and the human race in general.