cleverness, are reprehensible, they are doubly reprehensible in
history. The history of a people is not a mere mental discipline, like
botany or mathematics, but a living science, a _magistra vitae_,
leading straight to national self-knowledge, and acting to a certain
degree upon the national character. History is a science _by_ the
people, _for_ the people, and, therefore, its place is the open
forum, not the scholar's musty closet. We relate the events of the
past to the people, not merely to a handful of archaeologists and
numismaticians. We work for national self-knowledge, not for our own
intellectual diversion."

[1] In the introduction to his _Historische Mitteilungen,
Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte der pol-nischrussischen
Juden_.

These are the principles that have guided Mr. Dubnow in all his works,
and he has been true to them in the present essay, which exhibits in a
remarkably striking way the author's art of making "all things seem
fresh and new, important and attractive." New and important his essay
undoubtedly is. The author attempts, for the first time, a psychologic
characterization of Jewish history. He endeavors to demonstrate the
inner connection between events, and develop the ideas that underlie
them, or, to use his own expression, lay bare the soul of Jewish
history, which clothes itself with external events as with a bodily
envelope. Jewish history has never before been considered from this
philosophic point of view, certainly not in German literature. The
present work, therefore, cannot fail to prove stimulating. As for the
poet's other requirement, attractiveness, it is fully met by the work
here translated. The qualities of Mr. Dubnow's style, as described
above, are present to a marked degree. The enthusiasm flaming up in