hard, and laid the foundations of his Rabbinic learning, and took great
delight, lodging there often, though [quaintly adds John Stype] he was then
a married man." Montaigne, whose great-grandfather, be it recalled, was a
Spanish Jew, did not possess a library built in the open air, but he had
the next best thing. He used the top story of a tower, whence, says he, "I
behold under me my garden."

In ancient Athens, philosophers thought out their grandest ideas walking up
and down their groves. Nature sobers us. "When I behold Thy heavens, the
work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained; what
is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that Thou visitest
him?" But if nature sobers, she also consoles. As the Psalmist continues:
"Thou hast made him but little lower than the angels, and crownest him with
glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy
hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet." Face to face with nature,
man realizes that he is greater than she. "On earth there is nothing great
but man, in man there is nothing great but mind." So, no doubt, the
Athenian sages gained courage as well as modesty from the contact of mind
with nature. And not they only, for our own Jewish treasure, the Mishnah,
grew up, if not literally, at least metaphorically, in the open air, in the
vineyard of Jamnia. Standing in the sordid little village which to-day
occupies the site of ancient Jamnia, with the sea close at hand and the
plain of Sharon and the Judean lowlands at my feet, I could see Rabbi
Jochanan ben Zakkai and his comrades pacing to and fro, pondering those
great thoughts which live among us now, though the authors of them have
been in their graves for eighteen centuries.

It is curious how often this habit of movement goes with thinking.
Montaigne says: "Every place of retirement requires a Walk. My thoughts
sleep if I sit still; my Fancy does not go by itself, as it goes when my