TO MY MOTHER [Greek: threptêria]









PREFACE


It is a melancholy reflection upon the history of the Jews that they
have failed to pay due honor to their two greatest philosophers.
Spinoza was rejected by his contemporaries from the congregation of
Israel; Philo-Judæus was neglected by the generations that followed
him. Maimonides, our third philosopher, was in danger of meeting the
same fate, and his philosophical work was for long viewed with
suspicion by a large part of the community. Philosophers, by the very
excellence of their thought, have in all races towered above the
comprehension of the people, and aroused the suspicion of the
religious teachers. Elsewhere, however, though rejected by the Church,
they have left their influence upon the nation, and taken a commanding
place in its history, because they have founded secular schools of
thought, which perpetuated their work. In Judaism, where religion and
nationality are inextricably combined, that could not be. The history
of Judaism since the extinction of political independence is the
history of a national religious culture; what was national in its
thought alone found favor; and unless a philosopher's work bore this