original piece of philosophic writing in modern Hebrew. Krochmal led the
sad life of the Polish-Jewish scholar--void of pleasures and filled to
overflowing with privation and suffering. His whole time was consecrated
to Jewish science. He led a retired life, and while he lived nothing of
his was published. On account of the precarious state of his health, he
never left the small town in which he was born. However, his house
became the foregathering place of the votaries of Jewish science.
Especially young men eager to learn came from everywhere to sit at the
feet of the master. The influence which he thus exerted during his life
was reinforced and perpetuated after his death by the publication of the
"Guide of the Perplexed of Modern Times", in 1851, at Lemberg.

The studies contained in this work, for the most part unfinished
sketches, form a curious collection. Limitations of space forbid more
than a summary of its contents, and an analysis of its chief principles.

The need of finding a philosophic explanation of Divine existence forced
Hegel to formulate the axiom, that reason alone constitutes the reality
of things, and absolute truth is to be found in the union of the
subjective and the objective--the subjective corresponding to the
concrete state of every being, that is, matter, which forms his actual
reason, and the objective corresponding to his abstract state, that is,
the idea, which forms his absolute reason.

On this Hegelian axiom of actual reason and absolute reason, Krochmal
builds up his ingenious system of the philosophy of Jewish history. He
is the first Jewish scholar who views Judaism, not as a distinct and
independent entity, but as a part of the whole of civilization. At the
same time, while it is attached to the civilized world, it is
distinguished by qualities peculiar to itself. It leads the independent