Ecclesiastes : words of Koheleth, son of David, King in Jerusalem

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WORDS OF KOHELETH: Son of David, King
in Jerusalem. Being the Book of Ecclesiastes.
i2mo, $1.25 net. Postage extra.

THE EPIC OF THE INNER LIFE. Being the
Book of Job, translated anew. With Introduc
tory Study, Notes, etc. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25.

TENNYSON'S IN MEMORIAM. Its Purpose
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY,
BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

WOKDS OF KOHELETH

ECCLESIASTES

WORDS OF KOHELETH

of SDabiti, fling in

TRANSLATED ANEW, DIVIDED ACCORDING

TO THEIR LOGICAL CLEAVAGE, AND ACCOMPANIED

WITH A STUDY OF THEIR LITERARY AND

SPIRITUAL VALUES AND A RUNNING

COMMENTARY

BY

JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
ftitoeitfi&e pre^,
1904

BS

1475

EMMANUEL

COPYRIGHT 1904 BY JOHN FRANKLIN GENUNG
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published September 1904

TO
GEORGE A. GORDON, D. D.

LOVED AS FRIEND, ESTEEMED
FOR HIS WORK'S

SAKE

PKEFACE

IF a single word were sought, to denote the spirit
in which this volume has been written, the writer
would lay claim to the word constructive. As dis
tinguished from the purely critical, which latter
spirit so dominates our age, this may be figured in
simple terms of position and direction. The crit
ical spirit, taking a station outside the subject of
study, looks over into it with the eyes of a spec
tator, noting the results of a process in which it
has not shared, and passing judgment by a stand
ard of history or dogma or philology already made.
Its direction, by the very fact of being critical, is
essentially opposite to the creative surge and cur
rent of the author's mind ; it reduces his fervors
to a residuum of reason ; it imposes a dispassion
ate measure on what is to it a finished result ; its
besetting tendency is to leave the work cold and
obsolete, or analyzed out of life. The constructive
spirit, on the other hand, quickened first to living
sympathy, takes its place at the centre of the work
itself, whence the radiating lines of thought and
feeling stretch out in vital motion, seen through
the author's eyes and realized through his glowing

viii PREFACE

soul. Its endeavor thus is, virtually, to create his
work anew on his own pattern ; its direction is one
with his ; it has at heart the same goal of truth.
Such spirit by no means ignores or slights the
critical ; rather, it takes the critical in, on its way,
as an outfit of insight in which also the author
himself is concerned, and in whose light the prob
lems historic, dogmatic, philological, or whatever
else, assume the proportions essentially their due.
Thus its criticism has become a thing organic
and functional, a structural element of the tissue
itself.

The remark so often made of Biblical study
nowadays, that it is time to quit tearing down and
to begin constructing, applies with especial force to
this Book of Ecclesiastes. Itself initially a work
of reaction and stricture, its critical strain, its
negative element, lies on the surface ; so salient
that popular sentiment draws its allusions and
points its morals from it. " As bitter in the mouth
as a page torn from Ecclesiastes," is the way a
recent writer characterizes a certain modern book.
At the old sage's opening note of vanity and dis
illusion men, it would seem, have stopped short ;
have been too shallow and heedless, perhaps, to
go on to his solution. The very idea that there
is anything positive and constructive about the
book must needs, if asserted, accept a main bur-

PREFACE ix

den of proof. And yet this constructive strain,
this positive tonic uplift, is the controlling and
surviving element. It resolves all the discords,
makes the dark and turbid run eventually clear;
offsetting vanity by substance, the factitious by
the intrinsic, agnosticism by a solid asset of certi
tude. The whole book, it is herein maintained,
exists supremely for the sake of what is positive
and affirmative in it, for the sake of the better
structure it would build amid the ruins of a baf
fling world. It is in its large effect an uplifting
power, not a disintegration. That this is a tra
verse of the prevailing popular notion, the author
of the present volume is not unaware ; with confi
dence, however, he would invite the candid atten
tion of readers to his detailed presentation of it.

To find whether this is so, and how far, may
seem, perhaps, a complex matter, in view of
Koheleth's extremes and cross-currents ; for the
book is undeniably a repository of thoughts as
stubborn and contradictory as the thoughts of Na
ture herself. And yet it is no mysterious thing,
nor does it require special pleading, when once we
are rightly launched on the central tide of his
thought. It calls upon us merely to hear him out,
giving due weight to all sides and colorings of his
plea. It is, in fact, like all deeper problems of life,
an affair of relation, balance, continuity, propor-

x PREFACE

tion, or as may be more simply stated, an inquiry
how the book's various utterances hang together,
and what supreme and grounded effect they work.
In the light of an age which, almost beyond any
former one, is moving in the Koheleth vein, there
is need to determine anew, and with unpre-
judging care, the old sage's emphasis of things.
This is what the title-page means by its proposed
study of literary and spiritual values. The prob
lem on its concrete side is a purely literary one ;
literary in that broad and deep sense in which
alone the full concept of literature can be under
stood. To fathom it we must go beyond the curiosa
felicitas of words and figures, elegances and nu
ances. We must note how the book derives not
alone from its author, but from its age, from its
world, from the whole world beyond time and space
on which its two millenniums of vitality have laid
their power.

It is a large inquiry, as the interrogation of
any literature that has centuries of life in it must
be. It has also its smaller aspects, problems of
connection and relation, workmanship and organic
structure. Not all of these need be specified here.
Some stress is laid, however, on one element on
which more depends than would at first appear, the
element of division. What grouping of Koheleth's
words is feasible, to answer to the large trend of

PREFACE ri

the book and to the organic function of every
part ? There may be divisions that make for con
fusion ; how many such there are in fact is one of
the most striking disclosures of the study of works
on Koheleth. On the other hand, that there may
be a division making for unity and coherence is
a natural corollary of treating the thought as in
its large result homogeneous. For this reason it
has been deemed an important matter, not un
worthy of note on the title-page, that the book be
divided according to its logical cleavage.

Of the massive constructive idea which has
gradually emerged to clearer view in the study of
this volume, which has revealed Koheleth's mighty
hold on the very citadel of manhood, and imparted
to every step of the study as it were a sense of
consecration, there is no need here to speak. It
is best disclosed not by assertion, but by the mo
mentum of Koheleth's thought; and if in some
adequate degree candid readers may come to
realize it, in its true scope and power, the writer
desires to reckon it all to the account of that
archetypal Volume from whose pages new light
is continually breaking.

AMHBBST, MASSACHUSETTS,
April 19, 1904.

CONTENTS

WORDS OF KOHELETH: STUDY OF THEIR LITERARY
AND SPIRITUAL VALUES

CHAPTER I. — The Book, and its World . . Pages 1-38

I. Its perennial fit audience .... 1

II. Its essentially scientific attitude ... 6

III. The world of which it makes assessment . 16

IV. Its verdict compared with that of the Old Testa

ment in general 23

V. Its verdict compared with that of evolutionary

science 27

CHAPTER II. — Eoheleth's Response to his Time . . 39-90

His impulse of reaction 39

I. His encounter with the doctrine of immortality 42

II. His struggle with exotic influences of Hellenism 48

III. His strain of corrective Sadduceeism . . 54

IV. His relation to pessimism 62

V. Transition to compensating elements . . 69

VI. Compensation for agnosticism of futurity . . 71
VII. Compensation for the dominion of vanity . 78

CHAPTER III. — The Issue in Character . . . 91-156

Character as a new idiom of life ... 91

I. Its grounding in the age consciousness . . 94

»v CONTENTS

II. Its ideal for the pre-Christian Jew . . 105

in. Its hospitality to the essential Greek spirit . 120

" IV. Its movement toward emancipation . . 128

"* V. Its lack when the best is said . . . .145

~' VL Summary : Koheleth's place in the map of life 147

CHAPTER IV. — The Literary Shaping . . . 157-206

The body of the book shaping itself from within 157

I. An epitome of prevailing interpretations . . 160

II. What is in the name 169

III. Motive and method of the book . . .175

IV. Analysis of the course of thought . . . 179
V. Some residuary difficulties 190

VI. Some characteristics of the style . . . 197

II

WORDS OF KOHELETH : TRANSLATION AND RUNNING
COMMENTARY

The Outline 209

The Structural Idea 212

PROEM : The Fact, and the Question .... 213
THE FIRST SURVEY : An Induction of Life . . . 220
THE SECOND SURVEY : Times and Seasons . . . 243
THE THIRD SURVEY : In a Crooked World . . .257
THE FOURTH SURVEY : Fate, and the Intrinsic Man . 278
THE FIFTH SURVEY : Avails of Wisdom . . . .298
THE SIXTH SURVEY: Wisdom Encountering Time and

Chance 324

THE SEVENTH SURVEY : Rejoice, and Remember . . 345
EPILOGUE : The Nail Fastened 357

I

WOEDS OF KOHELETH

STUDY OF THEIR LITERARY AND SPIRITUAL
VALUES

"The vast, profound thought that brings with it
nothing but sadness is energy burning its wings in the
darkness to throw light on the walls of its prison ; but
the timidest thought of hope, or of cheerful acceptance
of inevitable law, in itself already is action in search of
a foothold wherefrom to take flight into life."

Maurice Maeterlinck.

" To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first
needful to believe in life." — Robert Louis Stevenson.

STUDY INTRODUCTORY TO THE
WORDS OF KOHELETH

CHAPTER I

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD

WHEN, in the intolerant old Puritan days,
some other-minded soul had the courage,

or effrontery, to " speak out in meeting,"

, . . The arrival

the instant wave 01 sympathetic response oi a new

J r . -r conviction

from back seats and galleries, braving

the frown from the pulpit, betokened
that though one man alone had taken the risk of
giving his conviction utterance, in the reactive con
viction itself, as it had mutely gathered head and
bided its time, he was not alone. He was a spokes
man. From that moment, and for that hitherto
silent class, his words, whether he would have them
so or not, were the initial point, if not of a party, at
least of a tide of sentiment. Souls that before had
been torpid and unresponsive, prisoned as it were
in an uncongenial order of things, now thrilled to
the unwonted note, as if the signal had been given

2 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

for the doors to be opened. It was as when in a
chaos of foreign voices men catch the sound of their
native language, and rise to heed and follow.

Among the works of Hebrew scripture, this Book
of Ecclesiastes, or as from the outset we had better
Koheieth's ca^ **' Koheleth,1 has always made upon
^e world the strange impression of
speaking out in meeting. It reads like
an irruption into some too self-compla
cent or too dogmatic age ; there is about it, too, the
same note of audacity and independence, the note,
so to say, of a soul unconformed. Further, it has
had the same touchstone effect ; a source of more
or less disturbance to many, while it has drawn out
into response its own congenial following. On the
one hand, it has in every age encountered the be-
Whom he wilderment, not to say suspicion, of the
?ied?ndtl" ortno(lox and devout; who have been at
disturbed. }oss to account for the presence of such
a book in the sacred canon, and disposed to apolo
gize for it now that it is there. The reason for this
is not far to seek. The book is not in the conven
tional religious vein. Its insistent charge of vanity,

1 So, without attempting to translate the name, I deem it better
to designate the unknown author. The word Ecclesiastes, the
Greek translation of Koheleth, entitles what is of all scripture
books the least ecclesiastical ; and its English equivalent, The
Preacher, denotes one who of all Hebrew writers is the least
clerical.

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 3

directed as this is to all points of the compass, and
its resolute agnosticism concerning futurity, could
not but be a discord in the general chorus of psalm
and prophecy and godly counsel on which the reli
gious spirit thrives ; it exhales an atmosphere in
which all that supports the heart on the heavenly
minded side suffers a touch of frost and disillusion
ment.

On the other hand, and by no means a reassur
ing fact, Koheleth's heartiest following has been
gained from the back seats and galler
ies. He has delighted that remnant of has

attracted,
unclassed thinkers and deniers, already

a suspected element, who too frankly love him for
the enemies he has made. One never hears of the
skeptics rejecting this book. It seems rather to
warm and nourish them. Eenan, the chief pos-
turist of the skeptical school, gives fair expres
sion to this equivocal reception of it, in his remark
that it is the only really charming book ever
written by a Jew. What so charms him the whole
tone of his own work helps us to divine. He reads
into it something of his own elvish, ironical spirit.1
Most things Hebrew present themselves to him as
things to disparage and satirize, from a point of
view, or rather an animus, essentially alien. This
book, from whatever cause, awakens in him a re-

1 A partial illustration of this is quoted on page 29C below.

4 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

sponsive chord. And for spirits that consort with
his, spirits with some indictment against the uni
verse, or with eyes mainly for its seamy and turbid
side, the book has always had an extraordinary
attraction; it seems to draw into its orbit the
unreconstructed, the minority element, the odd
natures, everywhere.

It would be exceeding our warrant, of course, to
judge Koheleth merely by the company he keeps.
Koheieth ^at Pessmiists> deists, epicureans, ag-
fudged* nostics, or whatever unholy set has found

S?dSbiraa his vem to their liking, should be taken
entage; ag j^g unjt Q£ measure^ jg Q£ ^Q game

logic as would reduce David to the dimensions of
the motley crew that gathered round him at the
cave of Adullam. His book has already suffered
much, no book in the world more, from just this
type of estimate : expositors, for the most part
apologists instead of sympathizers, taking the too
convenient way of labeling it with the name of
some school and putting it into a pigeonhole, clas
sified rather than read and heeded. This takes
us, however, only a little way, and that way mis
leading, because it leaves out all that is vital. To
name Koheleth's fit audience is by no means to
penetrate his secret.

Yet, on the other hand, not to recognize some
equivalence of involution and evolution, not to take

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 5

due account of that peculiar strain which endears
the book to the off side, would be to miss what is
most distinctive in it. Here is an utter
ance that strikes, so to say, the funda- separated

from them.

mental note of those dubious classes to
whom the religious world has given hard names ;
that propounds and perhaps solves the problem of
life in their idiom. Whatever it is to the saintly
and orthodox, to them it is clearly of tonic and up
building influence. It gives them voice and vision,
allows for their data, makes their cause heard.
Unless, as holding them utterly perverse, we deny
them the right to exist, we are bound to consider
their and Koheleth's common point of view, and
see what there is to legitimate their attitude and
temperament in the spacious House of Life. It is
a question, after all, not of names and labels, but
of truth. Koheleth has drawn these strange com
rades, nay, in some of our moods he draws us all,
into his orbit ; the world of every temperament
has its Koheleth hours, when with all the unction
of conviction it cries, " All vanity — what profit ? "
May there not be, then, some point deeper down

where these dark elements and the more

, f , , , The deeper

hopeful and courageous ones meet and point of

i convergence

are true ? That there is such a blending- and recon
cilement.

point, that Koheleth opens the way to

it by contributing as it were a needed minority

6 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

report, assuming toward life and the world an atti
tude which, though supremely sane and sound, the
conventional religious consciousness has been slow
to understand, — this, I believe, justly sums up his
significance for the centuries. Through his eyes
men hitherto conversant with the devotional or
theological approach are made to see, with delight
or dismay according to bent, a distinctly new color
ing and proportion of things.

II

What, then, is this attitude of Koheleth's, —
which in one utterance can with the pessimist re
duce the whole human career to dust and
His attitude
identified vanity, with the agnostic refuse to see

broadly

scientufo immortal light beyond, yet with epicu
rean good cheer bid man eat and drink
and rejoice in his portion ; which, with all its sense
of disillusion, yet steadily counsels the sanity of
wisdom, the sagacity of righteousness, the readi
ness for judgment, the fear of God ? A balance-
sheet of life this, which eliminates many deeply
cherished things, yet when all is reckoned is made
to foot up even ; a pathway at first sight strange
and devious, which yet reaches the same heights of
duty and vision. Is this, then, as critics nowadays
are trying to make out, a doctored-up attitude, the
composite resultant of a discord of authorships

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 7

and moods ; — or have we here one consistent body
of thought, one homogeneous portrayal in which,
the key once found, life active and reflective takes
on tone and depth and soundness, making " one
music as before, but vaster " ?

To this latter alternative, it may as well be
said here, the present study is unqualifiedly com
mitted. There is no adequate or even The kind
respectable reason, in my conviction, for JrtJjjJ Je is
assigning the book before us either to amenatole-
more than one author or to more than one funda
mental impression of life.1 In its pervading spirit,
in its literary value, in its essential lesson, the
Book of Koheleth is an organic unit. So much of
our case may be given away at this stage. If the
critics are judging otherwise, it is because they
are on a wrong, or rather a superficial tack. For

1 This needs to be said here, perhaps, not by way of contro
versy as if it were a forensic affair, but because critics of name
and note nowadays are going off in tame docility, like so many
sheep, after opinions made in Germany, which assert — to use
Professor Siegfried's words — that "it is impossible that the
Book of Koheleth, as it lies before us, could have been the pro
duct of one mind." My answer to this, conducted steadily
through the divisions and notes of the appended commentary, is
like Webster's answer to Choate in the famous case of the twin
car-wheels : " There they are," he exclaimed ; " look at 'em ! "
There the book is ; look at it, fairly and realizingly ; that is all
that is necessary. Look also at the fuller account of Professor
Siegfried's exposition, and at the estimate of some later English
ones, pages 162-167 below.

8 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

this, by way of data, must be premised : we do
not get at the real Koheleth by burying our noses
in a Hebrew grammar, or by running his thought
into moulds left over from scholastic philosophy.
We do not reach his limit, much as we are unde
niably aided, even by burrowing into the history
and ideas of his day. He so strikes out from his
age into the timeless and boundless, that to get
his large measure we must enlarge our world.
We must look at his thought in the setting of a
universe and an eternity ; just as men to-day are
learning to look at things in cosmic terms, in terms
of stellar spaces, and world energies, and vast
tides of evolutionary life. As soon as we project
his conception of being against the background of
that roomier universe which is coming into the
vision of our latest century, we find, with a feeling
hardly short of amazement, that he must have
shaped his thought, whether with full conscious
ness or not, to much the same setting.

To premise this is to make for Koheleth a
Largeness of clami so large that we must lay a deep
lor himm ground for it. And first by beginning
ied' at his essential attitude to things.

Whatever contradiction of moods or views it
may contain, the book reveals one unitary trait
as a constant spiritual quantity. It is keyed
throughout to the note of sturdy honesty. Kohe-

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 9

leth, looking forth with intense sympathy on a puz
zling world, reports not what he desires to find in
order to make life easy, but what must

His ground

be owned in order to make life forth- trait oiioy-

alty to fact.

right and true. He trusts not to what he
can read into the world as the logic of some dogma
or system, but only to what he draws out of the
world as tested fact. Moving thus in the domain
of the actual and verifiable, he stakes out for man
a way of living calculated for this concrete exist
ence under the sun, — or perhaps we should say,
for an existence intrinsic and timeless, — rather
than for some state of being yet future or some
theorized environment elsewhere. For such a
man, to confess vanity of that which yields no
essential result is merely a phase of honesty ; and
equally so is his agnosticism toward that which
in present limitation of being cannot be appre
hended, and for which present life has no occa
sion. His quest is for the view of things in dry
light, without haze or mirage from subjective
vapors within.

Here, surely, is an attitude to which our mod
ern age is no longer a stranger, whatever the
times may have been once. For this is Identl,led
nothing less, nothing other, than what JJJSittiic
we call the scientific spirit : that straight- splrlt
seeing, judicial, matter-of-fact disposition which.

10 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

as distinguished from the bent dogmatic, or spec
ulative, or devoutly credulous, craves its due rights
alike in a well-equipped world and a well-furnished
individual manhood. Such an attitude finds its
own comradeship. Others may tolerate Koheleth,
or try to reconcile themselves to some disturbing
strain in his argument ; it is the men of scientific
sense and temper, by whatever good or bad name
they are called, who move congenially and without
friction in his vein.

We know how reluctant has been the welcome
accorded by the ages to this scientific spirit. It

This scien- snare of odium for look-

igm- in£ out fearlessly upon the world and
I0d; daring to search and question. Its
refusal to make its judgment blind, its propen
sity to weigh and verify, holding all questions of
life open and not assuming beyond the data, has
been inveterately misjudged as the outflow of a
wicked heart ; to tenderly pious minds it has
seemed like a disposition to pick at the universe
in order to find pretexts for evil. Hence all the
opprobrious names that from age to age have
been thrown at it. Hence the fatuous idea, so
headstrong and bitter, that a warfare was neces
sary, or even possible, between science and religion.
It looks now, though, as if to make up for its long
repression and eclipse this hardy spirit were tak-

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 11

ing an overwhelming reprisal. The stone that the
builders rejected is becoming the head of the cor
ner. The supreme intellectual movement

, , . . tout in our

of our age is moulding, as by a cosmic day coming

to its own.

fiat, the ideals of all provinces of think
ing, the religious equally with the rest. Here is
how a recent writer, calling it " the central cur
rent in the literature of our time," defines its
attributes: 1 " If I am to find in one word the chief
bond between these minds, with their different
ways of work, I should name the great business
of our time, science — yes, science ! But it is not
the crude transference of physical images or theo
ries to matters of life and character that is meant.
The spirit of science is seen in the region of art
by a particular temper, by openness of vision, by
the determination to exhibit reality and to hope
for just so much as may be expected, by the bold
use of such hypotheses as can be brought to book,
and by the steady temper that has

' ' power to fright
The spirits of the shady night.' "

A far cry this from the thought and temper of
men, even of thinking men, a century ago, to say
nothing of the earlier repressive days from the
Puritan times backward.

The religious thinking, equally with the rest,

1 Oliver Elton : Tennyson, an Inaugural Lecture, page 16.

12 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

I said, is shaping itself to a scientific model ; and
this has given it a tolerant as well as a fact-craving
HOW it has spirik We are coming to realize that
even toward the sacredest outlooks not
ajj mjn(js can moVe in mystical vein,
not all can stifle questioning before the absolute
ness of oracle or dogma. If these temperaments
are necessary to salvation, then salvation is not a
universally available boon. For there have always
been some who, in seeing and thinking for them
selves, must give reason the right of way, and
trust only to verifiable fact, and run the risks of
honest doubt. Only so can their souls move in
freedom and joy. Until in some hospitable scheme
of the universe these can find welcome and citi
zenship, they must remain in their back seats and
galleries, an inert element, awaiting the voice that
shall speak out for them. And now, thanks to
the revolutionizing scientific movement, their day
of welcome, one may even say their day of domi
nance, is well upon us. Their claim and senti
ment, gathering silent head, have at length so
changed the molecular structure of things, that
now the scientific temperament, the scientific at
tack and measure, no longer stigmatized as infi
delity, is legitimating itself as a sane and by no
means irreverent attitude to life.

As a true exponent of this scientific spirit,

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 13

Koheleth is for all the centuries the pioneer, the
pathfinder. The traits just attributed to our age
accurately describe him. That " deter-

Oi this scl-

mination to exhibit reality and to hope 5SS5feS ii?
for just so much as may be expected " tte pioneer-
is what the new strain of his thought, so reactive
and bold, yet issuing in so much that is sound
and wise, reduces to. The verdict that he pro
nounces on life human and cosmic is the verdict
of a scientifically poised mind which has probed
the world of his time, gauged its resources to
their bound, and sternly held himself to such con
clusions as are amenable to verification. If his
verdict turns out to be authentic, then it is demon
strated that scientific judgment has place, along
side of prayer and doctrine, in a sacred canon ;
that the scientific mind, resolutely ignoring super
natural or transcendental assumptions, may yet
win to a real vision of the truth of things.

Here, however, we are brought up against the
crucial question which has caused all this doubt
over Koheleth. If his verdict on life
and the world is true, — all depends on of the scien-

that. It does not look like the priestlv as made by

J Koheleth.
or prophetic verdict ; seems in fact to

traverse it. Does his pronouncement on life, then,
justify his attitude ? That scientific attack of his,
that note of first-hand observation and inductive

14 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

caution, is all very well ; we like to see it applied
to microbes and extinct saurians. But if in the
end he has observed the erroneous thing, if in the
lack of some rectifying spiritual sense he has been
color-blind, seeing only vanity where there is sub
stance, only an ever-returning wheel of being
where there is progress, only a blankness of future
outlook where there is vision, — why, then his
science is at fault, it has not saved him. Perhaps
in making such sweeping assertions he has fallen
on a problem too large for a natural or biological
sense to tackle. If so, not Koheleth alone, the
findings of the scientific temper and procedure,
as embodied in this their pathfinder, are on trial.
Can a man, with the common sense and caution,
reporting on life according to what his eyes see
and his unmortgaged judgment weighs, be trusted
to report true ? Such is the momentous question
at issue.

To answer it in Koheleth's case, we must inter
rogate his world, the broad world of manhood life
as it lay spread out before him. We

Koheleth' s

world, and have to consider what data of his day

what data J

MflVerdict a land, what coloring and limiting
conceptions of things, were available
for his induction. It has indeed always been the
same world, with the same manhood powers stored
up in it. But men's vision of things has had to

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 15

grow, as they explored their manhood in steps and
stages. A revelation of larger reaches of being
presupposes eyes to see and spiritual impulse to
appropriate. Until these inner capacities are
grown, a world of sublime realities, all around the
soul and perhaps all the while acting upon it
unseen, may be virtually non-existent. And so
elements of life which in our riper day are lumi
nous and full of motive may once have lain in
twilight gloom.

This last-named fact we need here to premise
on account of the historic advance that has been
made between Koheleth's time and our

0. 1111 ,1 What Inter-

OWn. bmce he looked out upon the veninghis-

_ , _ . „ . n . tory compels

world, a great clarifying and emancipa- us to eiimi-
tion of the human spirit, so great as to
have revolutionized the cosmic consciousness and
created a new era, has been revealed to the world.
A later thinker asserts that in this great event
there was brought to light nothing less than life
absolute and rounded, with the first clear 2 Tlmotliy
vision of immortality. To all this, which L 10t
of course we must here eliminate, we must reckon
Koheleth's relation. He lacked something which
we have. By the broad evidence of history his
verdict fell in an unfinal dispensation, a twilight
period, wherein certain cardinal data of manhood
life, and perhaps the supreme key to it all, had

16 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

not yet become a power in the world's mind and
motive. If, then, some of his judgments are som-
bre, or if on some problems to us very vital he
must only say we cannot know, we may but have
reason, on testing his words, for admiring his
honesty all the more ; for his world, with its range
and limitations as interpreted in the cosmic con
sciousness (for this is what his pioneer utterance
of the scientific spirit connotes), his verdict of
things may turn out to be unescapably true.

Ill

In what manner of world, then, what pervading
moral and spiritual atmosphere, did Koheleth's
The environ- rea^zmg imagination move ? Some of
wSchn *ne broad traits of Hebrew history about
?a0sseesetjudg- two centuries before Christ, when we
suppose his book to have been written,
will perhaps furnish us a sufficient clue and back
ground. We may chart out his environment some
how thus : —

Long after the heroic age of Hebrew history
was past, when even prophetic fervor and insight
had subsided, and the Jewish national
spirit, already bowed by exile, disper

sion, and foreign tyranny, had further
submitted itself, under a hierarchy of priests and
scribes, to the austere dominance of Mosaic law,

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 17

there ensued, until the coming of Jesus, a pe
riod of about four hundred years, which has been
aptly termed "the night of legalism." 1 ByProfessor
It was the epoch in which, among all j^Ss8™8'
classes, life, labor, worship, had become Apologetlc3-
a prescriptive thing, dictated by codes and their
interpreters ; and the so-called Mosaic or Old Tes
tament dispensation, of which, obedience to law
is the keynote, was at that fully developed stage
where, one may say, its testimony was all in, ready
for the verdict which some day must come to
reveal what it really amounted to. Out of the
middle of this period it is, as it were pr0babiy
out of the very midnight of legalism, loo's, o.,

that these words of Koheleth come to oi the later
rri j .1 i Ptolemies.

us. They stand, then, just where we

want the verdict of the cosmic consciousness.
They are in a position to join with evolutionary
science, as we have come to accept it, in reducing
the interpretation of life and the world to the
common denominator of law. Whether this law
is expressed in Mosaism, or in the broader code

1 " That dark night which came down upon the Jewish Church
when it slept for four hundred years, and awoke, and arose,
and found itself Christian. Even the dreams of such a time, the
troubled moanings of such a weary trance, we may turn aside to
look upon with a fearful interest. . . . These years were a time
of deep and inward development." — Davidson, Biblical and Lit'
erary Essays, page 3.

18 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

of the laws of being, is quite immaterial ; it is
the recognized reign of legalism and the general
sense and feeling thereby engendered, — how the
human spirit thrives, so to say, in such a habi
tat and atmosphere, — for which we interrogate
Koheleth.

Little if any suggestion the book seems to have
of legalism, if we are thinking of law as adminis
tered by scribe and priest, or as glorified
pervaded in the song and ritual of the temple. If,
surlofpr< " however, we think of the spirit of law,
as it presses from above on the human
soul and as the human soul responds, we find Ko
heleth showing the very age and body of his time
its form and pressure. He defines the situation,
alike Mosaic and cosmic, as it is matured and es
tablished. So it was, we say, that the manhood
spirit must have felt, when the consciousness of
universal fated law, enveloping it like a heavy
atmosphere and getting into nerves and blood,
tinged the tissues of life and colored the whole
creation. It is not an age alone, but a dispensa
tion, that is here sized up ; and the book, like an
invading voice speaking out from back seats and
galleries, is as it were the soul of the pre-Christian
world become audible, making spiritual assess
ment of the whole case, just when it can best be
realized how much and how little a regime of

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 19

triumphant legalism can do. When, therefore, it
asks, " What profit hath man in all his labor ? "
the question is forced not from a casual writer,
but from a whole race.

The first and deepest result of Koheleth's criti
cism of his world is depressing. It has to be so,
from the only data available to him,

» Tne aepress-

because he has no reason for viewing Jjf^1"}
the dispensation of which he is partici- *oriietll's
pator and judge as other than a finality. *
To see to the end of one's world, to have reached
the point where there is nothing beyond, cannot
but be a pain and disillusion. And this just de
scribes Koheleth's feeling, as he comes to compre
hend his universal dominion of law. It makes it
all the graver to have discovered that law is a thing
of nature, a thing cosmic as well as Mosaic. For
even if you burst national and ecclesiastical bounds,
the world into which you emerge is no larger. The
same prisoning limits hedge you round, and when
you reach the end and look back, it is all vanity.

As it lies there before him, then, this law-en
slaved, labor-weary earth, with its futile enter
prises, comes to his vision like nothing

i • i Itsmonoto-

so much as a kind or prison treadmill, nous seif-

. recurrence

It is a closed and completed circuit, a and lack of

progress.

monotonous round of things returning

always on itself, never pushing farther, or contain-

20 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

ing promise of outlet into a larger sphere of being.
For man, too, as for the ongoings of nature, this
Proem, *s so- The next generation appears, and

treads its appointed round as does this ;
the fated order grinding out for them the same
cycle of ordinance and duty, duty and ordinance,
an interminable routine, as if the race of men
were eternally to be children or slaves, moving
only at the dictate of tutors and taskmasters,
with no initiative of their own, having all their
standards of life made outside and imposed upon
them. What it amounts to, when all is summed
up, is a vast wheel of being, with nothing new

under the sun. The greatest lack, in

survey!. ' labor and nature alike, is of what he
67; 11.21. _ .. ..

calls profit, — literally, surplusage, re
siduum. When the round, whatever it is, is run,
there is nothing left over, no new thing added, to
make the next turn of the wheel an advance on
this. This is the central count in his indictment of
his dispensation : it has not in it the principle of
life, increment, progress to a far event. And the
fact weighs on him heavily ; it is what produces
the undeniable gloom and austerity, the immense
pathos, of his book.

Nor is it alone the deadly monotony of it all
when the world has taken its pace that so pains
him. There is some alleviation to the poignancy

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 21

of this. To be wise and understanding, to have
eyes in one's head, is something; is in fact as
superior to doltish apathy as light is to Nor ms

darkness. Like Lucretius after him, this has

. . f some allevl-

Koheleth was not without his sense ot ation, Sur-
i -. • -, . P vey 1. 64.

Suave mari magno; he derived joy trom

his insight, though it opened a view into a futile
world. But even this wisdom and joy, at the very
next step, meets a limit seemingly impassable, and
all the more baffling for the spasm of cheer it has
roused. There, at the point where all vistas of life
converge, sits the Shadow feared of man. "I
know," Koheleth says, " that one event Swvey
befalleth them all. And I said in my l
heart, As is the destiny of the fool, so also shall it
befal even me ; — why then am I wise beyond the
demand?" Here, then, the prison-house, closed
before, is double-barred. In a cosmic dispensation
which by returning ever on itself betrays the fact
that its evolutionary potencies are exhausted, sud
denly, with no discrimination, no balance of ac
counts rendered, there comes the inevitable shock,
like the descent of a knife, and wise and fool,
man and beast, all lie in the dust together. It is
a thing explicable neither to wisdom nor to the
teleology of law. With the event of Surveyii.
physical death the whole gyrating tur
moil reveals its essential vanity. Is this the end ?

22 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

Is it not the end ? Who shall bring man to see
what shall be after him ?

Such, then, is Koheleth's indictment against

the world's order of things as he sees it. It is not

a matter of an age or a country : it is

Koheleth's .,,

indictment concerned rather with a whole stratum

summed up.

of manhood. In his tremendous field of
vision dates and epochs disappear, as it were ab
sorbed in that calendar wherein a thousand years
are as one day. He is passing judgment on the
highest conception of life that has yet been brought
to light, measuring it as far as a scientifically
tempered mind has eyes to see. No prophet or
priest can really see farther, however he may con
jecture or infer. This is not saying that there
is no higher conception, no clearer vision, yet to
come. As a matter of record, the bringing of life
and immortality to light, with the agency by which
they were revealed, is associated with a later era.
For Koheleth and his generation, however, that
era is still centuries in the future. What he is
sadly aware of now is the terminus, the worked-out
vein, of the old order : the life barely sufficient
for uses of this world, with no surplusage appar
ent, the immortality not clearly in sight at all.

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 23

IV

A meagre result this doubtless seems, to us who
have so long been familiar with the immensely
enriched conception of manhood and its

destiny which has grown out of the sup- of this ver-

J r dictolKolie-

plementation of the law regime by the

empire of grace and truth. It is like a
reduction to rudimental terms. And yet,
if we will reflect, it not unfairly sums up in dry
light what the Old Testament ideal of life, for all
its wealth of legislation and prophecy and fervid
song, has in its final balance-sheet to offer. Let us
see if this is not so. The worshipers, gathered
from their toil and worldly projects, are bowed
in the Temple, and the priestly choir is chanting,
" Thou wilt show me the path of life ; " - what,
then, in matter-of-fact terms, is that path ?

A goodly and noble one, to be sure : the way
of the law, righteousness and integrity and mercy
and wisdom ; its rewarding goal, length TheMosalc
of days, children, wealth, comfort, honor ; \™ JJe true
its dark alternative, destruction and manhood;
shame. Truly, this is the law not of Moses alone,
but of manhood being, from which n® jot nor tittle
can pass. If there had been a law given which
could have given life, if life inhered in law at all,
this would be its expression. The Old Testament

24 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

ideal of righteousness, on its stratum of being,
can neither be improved upon nor superseded.

But just as St. Paul perceived afterward, so
men of light and leading in Koheleth's time are
but limited beginning to discover that the operation
ofthisuses °f this programme of life is bounded.
It is, after all, a programme for only
one world. Its utmost length of days comes finally
to a stop ; its rewards of wealth, honor, family, —
to say that these can neither be counted on as
certain nor appease the soul when obtained, is
to confess that they are essentially a vain thing.
The stamp of the finite and futile is on them all.
And by those who to their piety add wisdom,
this is coming to be seen. Koheleth has merely
spoken out what is the misgiving of many a clear-
eyed soul. The most enthusiastic eulogist of the
prevailing law regime, the poet who composed
Psalm *ka* magnificent acrostic to glorify the

cxix. 96. dispensation of Mosaism, is after all
constrained to say, " I have seen an end of all
perfection, — though thy commandment is exceed
ing broad."

And while thus the limitation of things is com
ing to be discovered in the realm of the
Lack of out- &

a°woT0iaT?od seen, the soul that craves outlet, draw-
come. jng near tne frontier of the unseen and
asking, " If a man die, shall he live again ? "

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 25

receives no clearly articulated answer. We know
how reticent the Old Testament is about the nature
or even reality of a life beyond, and we
wonder why. It really has nothing au
thentic to say. Having reached in conception only
so far as is involved in a self -returning round of
manhood law, it has not yet mounted to that sum
mit whence over the horizon immortality comes
into view. We must rise higher than Mosaic ideals
to apprehend it. Not that immortality was not
yet a fact, or, as Dr. McConnell seems to think,
was not yet evolved : if ever a fact at all, it must
avail from the beginning. The question is rather
of conceiving the fact as it is, or as later scripture
puts it, of the coming of immortality to light.
And the answer, for the era we are considering,
is, that the ideal of life itself was not yet evolved
to the point where an immortality worthy of the
name was visible. The law-conditioned life is in
the nature of the case a closed circuit. It puts
forth no feelers, so to say, toward a larger sphere
of existence. Vague hopes, sighs, aspirations, con
jectures, are indeed not lacking to the Old Testa
ment — such streaks of dawn, in fact, as herald a
coming sunrise ; but all they can image beyond is
some realm of nerveless shades, some dreary sur
vival of a soul crippled by the loss of its body, or
in later days some refuge of Abraham's bosom.

26 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

And this is only a dream, not a support of char
acter, not a source of motive and assured action.

The Old Testament worthies, in fine, centred
their spiritual energies in a life just sufficient, so
to say, to hold its own and fulfill its pre-
deadiock. sent-world function. It does not seem to
have sufficient overflow of vitality, sufficient sur
plusage — to use Koheleth's term — to create a
demand for another and higher sphere of being.
They have indeed done nobly as far as they have
gone ; have evolved rules for their daily guidance,
customs and statutes for their nation, sacrifices
and liturgies for their worship; but as yet no
stately furnishing for a life to come. And the
defect lies in the essence of law itself, which can
rise no higher than its own level. For a sphere
higher than mere survival or wages or judgment,
men must first evolve eyes to see and a spirit to
appropriate ; in other words, they must grow a
new manhood. So we may say the Mosaic dispen
sation, as regards life and immortality, is at a
deadlock. It is bound fast to earth by the lack
of that highest touch, that surge of faith, initia
tive, adult spirit, which, as it is the essential prin
ciple of life eternal, creates the demand for and
vision of it.

A dispensation which has become an established
order, with its developed usages and with the care

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 27

of souls on its hands, is naturally slow to own its
limitations. To point these out, in however loyal
spirit, has the inevitable effect of skepticism and

impiety ; it is speaking out in meet-

Koheleth's
mg. Yet, if such limitations exist, the

world, the established order itself, can-
not afford not to know them. It is the Us era<
invaluable service of Koheleth to his era, speaking
out as one bound to no system of prescription, and
with a sharpness of note which compels attention,
to have pointed out where the virtue of the Old
Testament programme of life ends. He has dared
to say the harsh word that was needed to warn
men from false hopes. And thus he has reduced
the essential meaning and reach of his dispensa
tion to such factual expression as the whole mind
of man, the part which searches and questions as
well as the part which devoutly accepts, can lay
hold of and apply to life.

V

That from his available data the creation is made

subject to vanity, — cosmic life a tread-

J Connection

mill round, which never forges on but

returns evermore to renew its appointed

task ; mankind caught in the same vor-

tex, coming into existence, laboring, ar7sclence-

dying ; the whole failing to reveal that element of

28 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

surplusage which, needed in the world's affairs
as a sinking fund to progress, would in manhood
life be as it were a surge toward the freedom of
a higher range of being, — this basal idea of
Koheleth's, so out of tune with religious yearn
ing yet so unescapably true, is not only of the
spirit but in the observed field of science ; which,
in fact, through its doctrine of evolution, furnishes
the calculus by which on the largest projection to
reckon the orientation of our book. We are here on
modern ground, the ground of the higher biology.
To put the case in present-day terms, we may
say that what Koheleth observes in his world,

that worked-out vein of an old order, is
worfa'auhe to be interpreted as the end of a vast
evolution- evolutionary period in the development

of manhood. By the fact that the wheel
has come round full circle, with no new thing under
the sun to show for its revolution, that period
betrays its exhausted potencies. There is no fur
ther advance in this direction. If manhood is to
rise to yet higher things — and how can the evo
lution stop here ? — it must be by responding to
a new principle, by striking out a radically new
line of progress. This seems obvious. Meanwhile,
Survey ii however, the new era is not yet in sight.
70 ; iv. 43. ]y[an cannot see what is to be after him,
either in this world or in the next. All he can

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 29

see is, man and beast drawing the same breath,
fulfilling their similar routines of function, and
dying just alike. Preeminence of man Surveyli
over beast is there none, of wise over 69-
fool, none. Neither by being wise nor by being a
man does man seem to have accumulated such sur
plus to his capital stock of being as to give claim
and basis for a renewed career beyond. He has
not yet discovered what to make a future life out
of. Except as a mere question of survival, then,
an idle vaticination or speculation in psychical
research, the idea of immortality, to one in Kohe-
leth's era, is barren of significance. There is no
vital zest, no sinew of motive in it. The only way
to make it a living issue is to reveal a larger sphere
of being. There must be seen and accepted a life
worth survival, a life whose will it is to lay hold
on eternity.

It is from just this higher spirit of life that the
eyes of Koheleth's era are holden. Manhood is

not yet aware of the inner powers that

.. ,. .,, . ,. " ., Thenewora

coordinate with immortality. Describe not yet ap-

-, prehended.

them to mm as they are afterward re
vealed, and like Nicodemus he will say, " How
can these things be ? " He stands in- Of Jolm m
deed on the frontier of a new evolution- 3> 9l
ary era — his ability to limit and close up the old
is evidence of that ; but until the gates swing open,

30 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

it is as sealed to his conception as is the human to
the animal stage, or the protoplasmic to the chem
ical. No wonder, then, that Koheleth confesses
ignorance of what is to be. To be agnostic is for
him simply to be honest ; and to have emphasized
that agnosticism, in the interest of a greater life
value, is his untold service to his age.

As thus oriented, Koheleth' s book plants its
lesson of life squarely on the basis of the higher

biology. By the side of the lower or
Koheleth s . .

?e°r°£iatheap~ animal biology it takes its place, seeing

biology eve to eve w*tn **' an(* pronouncing the
same verdict. Both give the findings of
the cosmic consciousness as it looks out over the
vast unitary field of existence. Both see the mul
titudinous life of the world as it moves in obedi
ence to mysterious and fated laws of being. Both,
exploring life as they see it to the utmost margin,
are modest enough to feel and courageous enough
to say that the data for further knowledge have
given out. Their tracts of observation differ, that
is all ; or rather we may say, taking their stand
at different strata, different heights of being, they
define the cosmic situation each from its own
landing-stage.

The lower biology, with its microscopes and
test-tubes, contemplating the basal stratum of
material life, traces its vital pulsations from the

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 31

protoplasmic gerin up through plant and animal
to man, on through all that is animal in man, a

steadily ascending; course of organism

i JL ^ ^n IM. ! Sketch of

and function, still onward as life throbs its parallel,

. tlie lower or

in man irom birth through maturity to material

old age ; until at length the vital motion
which began away down in the plant dies out of
the human tissues, and the body sinks back into the
realm of the inorganic. There, where the cycle
returns on itself, the horizon of physical biology
is boundec] . Its prospect stops as short as if the
whole evolutionary current ended there. Its mi
croscopes and test-tubes have done wonders, but
their work is over. There is nothing in body or
brain, search as we will, to prophesy survival of
conscious life beyond. If such prophecy there be,
it must come from some higher stratum of man
hood being. All that we can see from this height
is a complex process of material functions travers
ing their law-appointed course of birth and growth
and maturity, then returning gradually into them
selves, then ceasing altogether. Perpetuated this
process indeed is by reproduction, but not clearly
improved upon, and never accumulating a sinking
fund toward abolishing the debt of death. Too
evidently this material chapter of evolution is a
closed circuit ; and as thus it comes back ever
more to its starting-point, it leaves no outlook open

32 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

beyond itself. The animal man, as such, has not
reached an eminence of being high enough to
afford a view over the horizon into another exist
ence.

Koheleth stands higher up, surveying a more
comprehensive landscape. His biological tract

takes in all that field of being wherein
Koheleth's ,. , . .

higher w- man, responding to his environment,
ology as
compared lives his life as under the pressure of a

will imposed from without, — the will
of heaven, of the state, of social, industrial, he
reditary conditions ; all, in short, that is implied
in the large regime of law. The atmosphere of
Mosaic legalism all around him has engendered
his peculiar realization of things ; still, he does
not differentiate between Mosaic and cosmic, natu
ral and moral ; does not mention law at all. It is
a thing too pervasive to mention, too universally
felt to permit even the conception of existence
outside the sphere of its working. Nor has he
any disposition to rebel against or evade it. None
the less one can feel, through the sensitive spirit
of Koheleth, what is the cheerless climate, what
are the imprisoning bounds, of a law-enslaved
world. The triumph of law, as it appoints to
everything its function, is, after all, the triumph
of a task, a routine ; the very order and calcula-
bility of its course dizzies the free spirit like the

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 33

turning of a vast wheel. And what is thus
revolved on itself remains within the limits of
its own orbit, a self-completing cycle of potencies.
In any domain wherein not spiritual initiative
and self-moved individuality but environment and
an external will impose control, the being so gov
erned is imprisoned in its environment. So far
there is no preeminence of man over beast.

Here, then, just as in the material stratum of
life, the evolutionary circuit is a closed one ; and
if there really exists in manhood a pro
phecy of immortality, it must come from outlook Ts0
a table-land of being higher up than the
level of mere subjection to law ; must for its rai-
son d'etre reveal a sphere of survival other than
is demanded for the rewards, or the penalties, or
the eventually perfected justice, that a sovereignty
of law connotes. All these adjustments, as we
see, are merely in the orbit of earthly being, are
the wage or requital that coordinates with earthly
deeds. If these were all that is beyond, why, then,
the other life would be merely set in the key of
its past, would be the mere obverse and comple
ment of this ; whereas the unspoken want of the
human soul, if its appetency for immortality is
awakened at all, is an immortality that leaves this
earth behind and goes on to ever-rising newness
of life.

34 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

What that more exalted sphere is to be, what
its motive and working principle, how the impulse

of the coming era shall wreak itself on
How Kobe- &

letn proposes Jjfe Koheleth knows as little as does his

not the solu-

nStB?eptte generation. He is not a prophet, but
toward it. only a hard-headed scientist ; he cannot
soar as on poet's fancies to see the far event. One
thing that he does see, however, right before his
eyes, is really the next thing that needs to be seen,
and as it turns out, it contains the potency of the
whole solution. I refer to that discovery already
mentioned, the discovery that the life he observes
is lacking in yithron, profit, surplusage. " What
yithron hath man in all his labor ? " he repeatedly
asks ; and repeatedly he places before his reader
some alternative wherein this or that procedure
has the yithron, or brings him up short at some
cul-de-sac of life where yithron is not. What
shall we make, then, of this key-word of his phi
losophy ?

Doubtless the discovery, in which every wise
soul will echo Koheleth, that when a man gets

what he works for, however glorious or
How this
lack of yith- remunerative, it turns out inevitably

r5n rises out .

of man's to be no reward at all, does not satisfy,

was what put him on the track of this

inquiry, " What profit ? " From this he comes

to see that there is really nothing outside of life

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 35

itself that can possibly be offered as payment, as
a cash equivalent, for it. If this holds good at all
— and no experience can gainsay it — it must
hold good in any and every sphere. It is not in
the nature of things to put up the allotted work,
the developed aptitude, the supreme interest and
power of one's life, in the market for pay. If life
cannot be its own reward, there is nothing else to
barter for it. We can see what a blow this idea
of Koheleth's strikes at his environing standards
of legalism. Suppose a man who has rigorously
fulfilled all the commands of this state of exist
ence going to another world to get his wages,—
what could possibly pay him off there, what that
he has not taken with him ? There is nothing for
it but to get his reward as he goes along, if he
gets it at all, and that not in some foreign equiva
lent, but in the very thing itself.

From this the idea goes deeper still. Looking
from the laboring man to the laboring world,
Koheleth becomes aware of that vast „

now it ap-

recurrence of activities and functions JJS'tfefut
always repeating themselves, and he tureouUook-
sees how fatally like that is all the human life his
law gives him data for. What surplusage, what
original individual thing to show, as the smallest
achievement of the free spirit, when once the wheel
has rolled round? He is seeking anxiously, and

36 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

cannot easily find, some net result, some noble in
crement of life, to answer to the tremendous out
lay it represents. In the bounded field before him
the potencies that are in sight are all exhausted
in the struggles and achievements, the dues and
ideals, of this world. Like an engine wherein all
the motive power is used up in making the ma
chine go and none is left for productive work, so
here in manhood there is, so to say, just enough
vitality to serve the requirements of this earthly
sphere, and none to spare. As Koheleth sums the
situation up, it is all vanity, vapor, amounts to
just the breath that is used in keeping alive. In
other words : in the stratum of being that he con
templates, the wealth of life is not abundant enough
to overflow its present environment and demand
another sphere for its exercise ; has not reached
the vital exuberance, the spiritual masterfulness,
whose logic is immortality.

The practical first step onward from this nega
tive view of life is taken in no way so effectually
as by simply owning the situation and
acUusting one's se^ to it. Koheleth's ag-
nosticism, which is the expression of this
attitude, is merely that sturdy good sense
which will neither water its capital stock nor deal
in speculative values. What further steps he takes,
steps of positive upbuilding, — and they are neither

THE BOOK, AND ITS WORLD 37

few nor unimportant, — will come out in succeed
ing chapters. Meanwhile it is something to recog
nize that before immortality can come in sight, life
itself must be enlarged and enriched; that there
must be a new surge of power and initiative. The
heavenly province, which must be other in charac
ter rather than in space or time, can be annexed
only through a spiritual overflow which, having
formed the soul within to a higher model and mo
tive, until it has gathered irresistible head, bursts
forth to enter on its own domain. Until this high
est manhood impulse comes, the outlook beyond
can have no basis more tangible than dreams and
conjectures ; existence being eventually pressed
back, in spite of its eager energies, to the fellow
ship of the fool and the beast.

In thus sizing up his dispensation of legalism,
Koheleth puts a period to it, so to say, as a stage
in the evolution of manhood, and shelves _,

't Koheleth's

it away, along with the animal stage,
among concluded and outworn issues.
It is not pleasant thus to reduce a cher- Uon'
ished order of life to zero. This first criticism of
his world, as has been said, is depressing. It has
to be stern and sweeping, perhaps ; concluding all
under vanity that it may open a more substantial
way of life for all. Nor does the question, What
profit ? wholly miss its sufficing answer. Even the

38 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

night of legalism, with its heralding stars, may
have its songs in the night, and their melody will
not be depressing.

Here Koheleth stands, then, at the end and be
ginning of things, at the watershed between an old

and a new era. Of the new he has no
At the . . .

watershed vision as yet, no premonitory thrill of

betweentwo . . ' . , , J

spiritual what its vital glory is to be ; he sees only
the routine world-order in its times and
seasons, bringing to every man his portion and to
every purpose its occasion. Meanwhile, if his ver
dict is true — and in its marks of truth it shares
with the verdict and spirit of science — he has
done the world incalculable service in warning it
where the boundary is, and how thankless were the
attempt to work the old manhood vein further. To
have defined the situation thus is already to be
beyond and above it ; he has secured the foothold
wherefrom to take flight into life.

CHAPTER II
KOHELETH'S KESPONSE TO HIS TIME

A SALIENT characteristic of Koheleth's
thought is its pervading mood of reaction.
This it is which imparts to his book its Koheletll,a
audacious note, already dwelt upon, as Jj°°jently a
of one who speaks out in meeting, to the JS^gSnst
dismay of the orthodox and the unholy wlwt?
delight of the freethinkers. When, however, we
inquire just what it is, accurately, that Koheleth
is in reaction against, the answer is not immedi
ately at hand. He is not here to scatter chaos and
doubt over the orthodox establishment, in state,
church, or scripture ; has no quarrel with things as
they are. Of all these, with their good and ill, he
takes fair account, moving in their atmosphere and
bearing their burdens. Nor is his book of that
carping and occasional character which we associ
ate with reactions ; it urges on its age no left-over
truth, as it were a marginal gloss and emendation.
Rather, reopening the whole case, it aims from its
undictated point of view to see life steadily and
see it whole. Nor again does the book, in the po-

40 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

lemical or perverse spirit of many a reaction, com
mit the soul to any doubtful issue of life. After
all its dim and devious circuit of thought it reaches
a familiar old stopping-place, landing the reader
by a natural sequence in that soundly righteous
position where the soul, fearing God and keep
ing His commandments, is left ready for the scru
tiny of a coming judgment. Obviously some of the
pious misgivings that have gathered about the
question of Koheleth's influence may safely be
dismissed. The skeptic of whatever name, whom
his views are presumed to abet, may, if he duly
heeds the sage's directions, turn out to be no very
depraved person after all.

Our study of Koheleth's recognition of his era
in the previous chapter has left him, like Matthew
Arnold after him, —

" Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born ; "

and his austere acknowledgment of the situation,
which many have misread for pessimism, is unde-
Resuitoi niably saddening. To look this prison-
house existence of ours in the face,

ook' aware that it has announced its end and
that the old manhood vein is worked out, is not a
restful state of soul ; it leaves too much of our na
ture in protest. It has, however, its compensation,
perhaps in the very protest itself ; for it secures

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 41

a foothold wherefrom, as the way opens, to make
escape into a freer air, a larger era, or failing this,
to make the best of that which is. The latter
course, in any event, is the nearest-lying duty, the
way of wisdom in scorn of consequence.

But though by no means unready to welcome a
new era, should such be revealed, Koheleth is sane

and sturdy too; his scientific temper

J r. Concentra-

stands him here in good stead. He will
take no false step forward; his flight
into life must be something more sub-
stantial than a flight of fancy. Just here *
it is that his reactive mood focalizes ; not against
what is already in the age, ordained and estab
lished, but against something that is in danger of
coming in, some tendency or wave of advancing
sentiment which before it is granted free franchise
must be rigorously assessed and corrected. Just
here, too, in the spirit he would maintain against
this, emerges, buoyant over all negations, a tonic
quality, in a strain so strong and wise that the
world ever since has been at loss whether with
the theologians to call Koheleth's book the most
pathetic in scripture, or with the hardy worldlings
to call it the bravest and cheeriest.

42 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

Comparison of Koheleth's words with what we
know of Jewish history reveals little evident con
cern of his with public affairs and events
of his time, hardly enough, indeed, to en-
able us to determine even his century.

thinking of With the thinking of his time, however,
his age.

with its general atmosphere of sentiment,

feeling, spirit, if we could enter into this, we should
undoubtedly find him intimately engaged. His
book is not without indications of such regard,
plainly legible between the lines ; indications the
more noteworthy because it is out of some such
face-to-face encounter with his generation, one feels
sure, that his tonic reaction and perhaps the very
emphasis of his agnosticism come. Only, it is
from beneath or rather inside his thought that
these indications reveal themselves ; from the pas
sion, the animus, of the man.

Exploring his pages, then, for some revelation
of his state of mind, one of the most striking
Koheleth's things that we note is his antipathy to
Soots117 fools. He misses no chance to score
to wordy7 them. The feeling seems to have passed
beyond the calm tenet of his Wisdom
theory into a kind of personal grievance. And of
the various aspects of folly that irritate him, there

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 43

is none against which he so often inveighs — go
ing out of his way to do it sometimes — as the
folly of vapid and voluble talk. He writes as if
the air around him were vocal with this ; as if some
inundation of silly babble were sounding in his
ears like a dreamy confusion. " As com- Survey mg
eth the dream in the multitude of care," 66<
one of his maxims runs, " so the voice of a fool
in the multitude of words." Something there is,
it would seem, in the diffused reverberation of his
age's talk, which disturbs his sense of what is
wise and sane, some much discussed notion, per
haps, which, if not to be condemned as wrong, yet
merits the treatment accorded to things light and
useless. What is it?

Two noteworthy passages, in both of which he
encounters this wordy folly in the same way, may
perhaps contain a clue. In his Fourth
Survey, wherein he has iust been facing sagesTn

J' -J ' which the

the measure ot man s rate, he ffoes on specific

cause of this

to say, " 1 or that there are words many,
multiplying vanity, — what profit there
fore to man? For who knoweth what is good for
man in life, all the days of his vain life survey
which he spendeth like a shadow ? For
who shall report to man what shall be after him
under the sun?" Again in the Sixth Survey, where
his contemplation of the general efficiency of wis-

44 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

dom has suggested the contrasted bootlessness of
folly, and especially of the speech of folly, he says,
" Then, too, the fool multiplieth words ; — though

man knoweth not what shall be, for
Survey

vi. 69. what is to be after him, who shall tell
him ? " In both these passages, it will be observed,
the countering doubt that Koheleth interposes to
the spilth of words is his skeptical question about
what is to be ; as if the folly centred somehow in
voluble twaddle about future things. Nor are these
strictures merely casual; whenever his thought
calls upon him to look beyond this world and this
life, it is apt to become intolerant and heated,
as if there were connected with the problem some
disturbing element, some fallacy.

Are we not justified, then, in thinking that
Koheleth's bete noire of vapid talk was connected

with current discussions of futurity, —
Related , . ,

apparently some phase, perhaps, which was imper-
to current x

views of ilins; the £ood sense ot a sumect that
Immortality.

needed careful handling ? At just about
this epoch, as we know, the doctrine of personal
immortality, a late Hebrew growth, was finding
its way from the esoteric theories of philosophy
into the common mind. We have no means of
tracing the details of its history ; but we may be
sure that whenever the idea became a general
topic of discussion, its effect must have been far-

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 46

reaching and profound. From the fascination
which the same idea has exerted in modern
times, in the various deep or shallow exploitations
of it, we can in some degree realize how it must
have fared in the exuberant energy of its nascent
state. It would be the pasture-ground of endless
speculations and theorizing : notions such as Kohe-
leth calls in question in one of his allu- gurve
sions, of the gravitation or levitation of IL 62<
spirits animal and human, or perhaps the shadowy
conceptions of theosophy and psychics. It would
be just the domain for a riotous Oriental imagi
nation to thrive in : constructing airy heavens
and hierarchies, or germinating into the grandi
ose imagery of that body of apocalyptic literature
whose beginnings we trace to this era. A great
awakening the new doctrine must have caused,
whenever it became naturalized, as it met the
cravings of the Jewish spirit for an emancipated
future, cravings so much the keener for the long
snubbing that the people had suffered from baffled
national hopes on the one side and a stern Mosa-
ism on the other. Here to the ardent Hebrew
soul was offered a way of escape from the hard
austerities that encompassed it ; and all the more
alluring because the hopes it created were so le
gitimate ; it broke no law, it concealed no subtle
impiety.

46 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

All this, however, as the eager discussion rever
berates in the air about him, is to Koheleth only
so much idle talk, the garrulity of fools,

How Kohe-

tures'ttie" as ^ were an emPty ^a(^ and fashion.
o?Se°cS-M This is his treatment of the doctrine, or
idea' at least of the phase that it is assum
ing in his age — to unearth its essential lack of
fibre. He brings against it no prophetic spirit of
denunciation, no priestly warning of endangered
law or custom. Prophet and priest, in fact, with
whom he has no quarrel, are doubtless contributing
to make the new doctrine a prevailing sentiment,
an orthodoxy. His is rather the minority report of
the Wisdom spirit, and perhaps of only one strain
of the current Wisdom at that ; for the Wisdom
of Solomon, coming into Jewish literature at a
period not long after, and reading like a veiled an
swer to Koheleth, squarely maintains immortality
as a philosophical truth. Koheleth, it would seem,
stands out almost alone, exponent of the scientific
and cosmic sense ; not to say that the doctrine is
untrue, but that it is unprovable. You do not really
know anything about it, he virtually says ; you
are dealing in cloudland fancies, your philosophy
lacks substance. What you need, what
chapter ' the nature of the thing requires, is not

1. p. 9. ... .

imagination to picture and speculate,
but eyes to see; — "Who shall bring man to see

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 47

what shall be after him ? " He meets the question,
in other words, in just the temper that has been
ascribed to our latest age, " the determination to
exhibit reality and to hope for just so much as
may be expected."

Such temper is not to be condemned as narrow,
merely because it is cautious and demands evi
dence and verifies ; it is -just as likely ,

J J Koheleth

to coexist with unmeasured openness of

vision, only it sees more deeply, too.
It confronts the popular movement with splrit>
the instinct of a disciplined, conservative sense;
the conviction that this is not a thing to accept
blindly, that in a question of such tremendous
import one had better go slow and be sure of his
ground. So in the warm enthusiasm of his time
Koheleth has to assume the ungracious attitude
of a reactionary and old fogy, interposing such
counterweight of criticism as he can while the
wordy current sweeps past him. Radical as he
reads to us, he really gives voice to the conserva
tive old Hebrew spirit, clear-eyed, steadfast, draw
ing strength and safety from what the ages have
proved good ; as one of his maxims puts
it, " Though in a multitude of dreams 80'
and vanities and words many, yet fear thou God."

48 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

II

It is generally held, though the proof is neces
sarily vague, that the doctrine of immortality,

with the tone and sentiment it imparted
How Kohe-

therecepSon to ^e> came ^nto tne Jewisn mmd and
the°G?lek° nation by way of the Greek philosophy.
immor- Things look as if it were the outcome

not primarily of religious fervor or of
logic so much as of a certain relaxed and self -pleas
ing sentiment, and as if Koheleth's animus were
against the whole strain and attitude of the con
temporary spirit. Assuming this to have been
the case, we seem to read between his lines, and
especially in what may be called his fighting
ideas, what spirit of reception that Hellenizing
influence had, and what balancing-up or correc
tion it needed.

There is first the appeal it would make to the
pace-setters of floating opinion, the men of leisure

and social position, the frequenters of
to the social the temple courts. This appeal it is,

doubtless, with the lively discussion it
rouses everywhere, which sets Koheleth in such

uneasy mood at the wordy folly all

Compare i i • TJ •

Survey ill. around him. It came, one may imagine,

in some such wave of sentiment as we
often see pulsing through society and drawing

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 49

out the quidnuncs. It was not really a wave of
deepened thought and wisdom, for these classes
are not the thinkers but the talkers; rather it
was a kind of spontaneous adjustment of life to
the superficial effect of the new idea. Enough,
men would begin to say, of these legal austerities
checking and chilling the soul at every turn with
their everlasting Thou shalt not, and their inflex
ible threat of retribution and judgment. Let us
give this sunnier Greek spirit its due, laying
aside restraint and foreboding and tak
ing the good of life as it comes. The survey u.

. . . 55-66.

human spirit is not tied to animal laws ;
it is ethereal, it will mount to its own realm of
splendor. There was awake in the land, especially
among the genteel classes, much of the spirit
which Koheleth-Solomon assumes and reduces to
a residuum of vanity in his enterprises of build
ing and pleasure ; and this spirit would thrive on
the image of a Greek Elysium. It was, we may
say, the esthetic side of life asserting itself; and
to the well-nigh starved Jewish sense it must have
exerted a powerful popular attraction. Nor was
this Hellenizing movement without its profound
influence on Koheleth himself. We shall see in
the sequel what an enlargement of life it left with
him ; he does not, indeed, so much condemn it
as make practical and discriminating assessment

50 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

of it. Its disposition to limber up existence and
make life livable is in fact an essential in his own
quest of the chief good. He takes its effects, but
arrives at them in a different way.

For to one in whom the native Hebrew austerity
is so deeply rooted, this speculative wave, with its
luxuriance of vaticination, has all the
SihaetKohe- unsubstantially of an exotic. It does
this side not grow out of that Hebrew soil which
ages of precept and psalm and pro
phecy have fertilized. As the first and fatal flaw
it lacks basis, lacks grip on the motive powers
of life. It transfers life from the practical to the
esthetic and visionary, is moving in the sphere of
a self-pleasing fancy. So when it comes to pro
nounce on the splendors of a life beyond this
world, or to shape the conditions of such existence
to tangible form, it is projecting its imagination
too far beyond its base of supplies. Its

" words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought,"

words which, as they are bandied about in the
chatter of discussion, may as well be treated ac
cording to their inherent lightness, and relegated
to the keeping of fools.

The fighting idea which Koheleth sets, or rather
which already stands immovably, over against this

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 51

popular dream of futurity, is that ground concep
tion, already analyzed, which gives his whole book
its deep pathos ; interposing the huge The prln,
inertia of a cosmic order, an evolution- besets1^
ary era. It is the confession that the agaln
light of eternal life is not yet above the horizon.
Keduced to lowest terms, it is after all a very plain
scientific principle translated into the idiom of
life. You cannot push human destiny, it virtually
says, any more than you can raise water, higher
than its source, its vital principle ; and the source
of this new-fangled exploitation of immortality is
no higher, has evolved no more inner resurgence,
than manhood had when all it could prognosticate
was Sheol and the weakling shades. The splen
dor of the end must already lie prophetic in the
strength 01 the hidden springs. To say that this
speculation lacks basis of verifiable fact is to say
that it does not proceed from an underlying core
of intrinsic character. It is from this basis, always
from this bed-rock of the intrinsic man, that
Koheleth insists on casting his horoscope of life.
Looking out from this basis, this popular vaticina
tion is not what scientific insight demands, not the
masterful outrush of the manhood spirit seeking
its fit environment beyond: not that, for no stir
rings of the age or of the human heart, no upris
ings of surplusage, no overflow of spiritual vitality,

52 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

warrant that yet. No ; this movement is merely
the ebullition of an idle figment, kindled by a
strain of exotic speculation, trying to image a fu
ture world without first providing a soul fitted to
inhabit it. To one who is looking for a city that
hath foundations this does not meet the deep logic
of things. It is getting forward too fast to take
the solid values of life along with it. So in inter
posing his trenchant agnosticism Koheleth is really
giving utterance to a more grounded faith. He is
putting on the brakes, asserting anew the lapsing
traditions of wisdom and piety, laboring to make
the eager explorers around him content to waive
discovery of future worlds until into the ken of
a wealthier manhood there swims a planet better
worth discovering, a larger existence prognosticated
not by dreams and fancies but by fullness of life.
After all, it is not so much the seeing that signifies
as it is the developing eyes to see ; the vision is
ready when the eyes are, and large according to the
largeness of the man.

Such, in my view, is the meaning of Koheleth' s
HOW reactionary indictment against the spir-

wroughtto itual tendencies of his time. It goes

save tho Old i • . i

Testament deeper than merely stemming the cur-
evaporation rent of a new-fangled doctrine. There
in vain phi
losophy. is m0re in it, too, than checking a too

empty fad of speculation. For it comes in most

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 53

timely to save the Old Testament ideal of religious
life in its magnificent integrity, forcing it past the
quicksands of a vain philosophy along the line of
its own healthy development, toward the energiz
ing faith of the era of grace and truth, that Mes
sianic stratum of manhood from which alone life
in its fullness and glory is visible. They also serve
who only stand and wait ; and in Koheleth's time
waiting may have been an especially needed virtue.
In the glamour of its new Greek ideas, the Jewish
world may well have been perilously near leaving
an authentic revelation for an esthetic luxury of
fortune-telling and apocalyptics ; and so it may
have come to the verge of committing its religious
hopes to that unsubstantial speculative support
which has divorced so many religions from the
practical demands of the life that is. If this was
so, or in the degree in which it was so, then just
these words of Koheleth had a mission which, in
the odium that attaches to negatives and censures,
we are too apt to undervalue. The last thing that
would occur to us, perhaps, would be to discern
in Koheleth anything even remotely Messianic ;
but if in the psychological moment when some wise
voice was needed to warn men against shallow and
fallacious ideals Koheleth met the occasion and
thus wrought to keep the way clear for a higher
realization of life, can we deny him a momentous

54 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

share in the large preparation for the fullness of
the times?

Ill

Another appeal of this doctrine of immortality
there was, which Koheleth could not dismiss so
origin of the scornf ^J- Tnat was the appeal it made
Movement to tlie sterling religious heart, which as
uhat£dTnnt~ by an instinctive affinity would accept
andslS and naturalize the theory of a life be
yond as a welcome solution of this life's
problems. Come it from Greek philosophy or
from whatever source, the doctrine would so meet
a craving and so justify itself that by the pre
dominating consensus of the nation it would soon
be a Jewish tenet, divested of all color of hea
thenism. It was by no convulsion, but rather as
a truth whose arrival is expected, that it became a
part of the orthodoxy of Judaism.

Still, the initial working of it, the nascent state
of the quickening idea, must have been intense.
The move- ^e won^er tnat ** left so meagre sur-
rooteVin vival, in literature or in some identifiable
meKnd movement. Was it not, however, largely
on the stimulus of this very idea, with
its tremendous sifting power, that there began to
work the inner convictions and sentiments which
not many years after Koheleth's time we find hard-

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 55

ened into the sects of Pharisees and Sadducees?
At some time in this legalistic dispensation two
strains of thought began to deposit themselves as
from a solution, strains representing different atti
tudes of temperament or education toward the
unseen, and so essentially contrasted that See Actg
in St. Paul's time the Sadducees stoutly "UL 8'
denied resurrection and spiritual existences, while
the Pharisees confessed both. So divergent an
effect sets us looking for an adequate cause. It
cannot be all political or worldly. It must be
sought in the people's heart, at a depth greater
than is revealed through rabbinism, or state exigen
cies, or priestly aristocracies. All these go with
the effects, not with the inner predisposition.
What cause so likely, when we come to think of
it, as the divergent attitudes assumed toward the
idea of immortality, approached by the devout
and imaginative on the one side, and by the
worldly-wise and matter-of-fact on the other ? The
active and the contemplative, men of the present
and men of the future, these represent a tempera
mental classification which manifests itself in every
age and in every movement. As the new doctrine
took shape, it must have been, on some such
cleavage line as this, a powerful touchstone of
hearts. Men could not help taking sides ; for even
to let one's self remain content with the old ways

56 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

and the seasoned standards of life, while the new
movement sweeps by toward its unexplored goal,
is to take a side.

It is the trenchant idea that Koheleth brings

to bear, with the defect or fallacy that it unmasks,

which makes us think that here in his

leth'spiea book we have a glimpse of Pharisaism

uncovers 1011

germinal and oadcluceeism in the germ, iollow-
ideas.

ing the direction of an unforced tem
perament and not yet exposed to the heat and
rancor of controversy. At the same time the
sweep and absoluteness of his plea reveals his
conviction that the issue is no light or idle one ;
men must not let themselves drift here, they must
hear all sides, they must define their position.

Let us see what there is to bear this out.

Under the name of Hasidim, pious ones or

saints, a class of people who may be regarded as

initiators of the Pharisaic strain begin

tors of the" to be mentioned at just about the time

strain, and we assign to Koheleth and the Greek

their atti
tude toward influence. They were not a sect, and
futurity.

never became one ; they represent merely
a trend or cult in Jewish life, being such devout
observers of the law as are singled out for eulogy
in the First Psalm. To attribute to these an ima
ginative or mystical temperament would suggest
a trait more absolute than there is warrant for. It

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 57

is only in a relative sense that the Jew can be
called an imaginative being at all. But as giving
more play to the devotional, meditative side, these
Hasidim would doubtless, of all the nation, re
spond most warmly to the doctrine of immortality ;
translating it, however, from the sensuous and
esthetic to the clear-cut concreteness of their law.
Thus, with a large and eventually controlling
class, the doctrine came in to subserve a purpose
not merely esthetic but useful. It furnished a
realm for the requitals of life : rewards for the
righteous, retribution on the transgressors, a gen
eral balancing-up of accounts. It opened, in other
words, a convenient sphere for the sanctions of
their universal moral law.

Just here it is that Koheleth sees the unspir-
itual tendency and meets it. Postulate a setting
to rights not here but beyond the grave, what tend_
and the temptation is strong to make up hSf sees
this earthly existence with mere refer- l
ence to it ; to postpone the deepest interests of
life till then, or to be careless of failures here that
may be retrieved yonder, or perhaps to make the
central principle of this life a cold-blooded invest
ment of merits with a view to future gain. In
short, make a system of future rewards and glo
ries a motive, and it draws into its current all the
thrifty commercial side of man's nature, the side

58 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

which calculates profits, and records the aims of
living in a ledger. We can think how quickly a
people like the Jews would discover this, and how
eagerly a nation whose hopes and fears were all
embarked in their Mosaic law would grasp at the
chance to make that law with its eternal sanctions
a paying investment.

Of course it took years of unspiritual scribism
and rabbinism to vulgarize the doctrine to this ex-

Thefi htin *en*' ^ere wou^ always be against

Jde*' or. . , such brazen barter a secret revolt of
ouDt,wnicn

SsagSnst shame- But something like this, after
all, correlates not unnaturally with a
regime of arbitrary law ; the desire of gain, the
dread of loss, the calculation of chances, in some
form, clings to all its promise of the future. It
is just here that Koheleth reveals its vulnerable
point, in that cardinal question of his, " What
profit?" and in his wholesale reduction of men's
aims to "vanity and a chase after wind." Make
up life with reference to profit, to pay, to any
kind of cash equivalent apart from the life itself,
and your expectation is doomed. Follow it into
whatever line of work or achievement or success
or glory you will, even with a king's resources to
help you, and you find no residuum of gain. Nay,
there is no surplusage of life itself, if all that life
means is bondage to a cosmos of law ; the law of

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 59

the spirit of life is not yet revealed. Thus, com
ing again on that idea which on its world side is
so infinitely sad, we find it on its practical side
employed as an incitement to noble strength. By
closing the avenues to the external in every direc
tion, Koheleth forces the life inward upon itself ;
compels it to be its own reward, its own excuse
for being. The question with which he probes
the motive of the new doctrine reduces virtually
to this, What is that thing reward, for which, as
nothing yields it here, you are flying to another
world ? And what would be the value of an im
mortality which, instead of opening an inconceiv
ably higher state of being, seems to exist to no
end but as a paymaster to settle the old scores, or
as a scrubbing-maid to clean up the soilure of this
state ? You must get a better ideal of reward
than that ; must give up the thought of living for
pay at all. It is thus that he uncovers the weak
spot in the popular movement, in his warning
sense that the doctrine of the future, in unwise
hands, may be whittled into a paltry thing. And
the vehemence of his agnosticism is a pointer
against the pettiness, the spiritual scheming for
gain, from which he would save his awakened
age.

In his cool-headed, unpietistic, this-world tem
perament, as contrasted with those more zealous

60 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

dispositions which are on their way to Pharisaism,

Koheleth may be regarded as the nursing-father

of the Sadducees.1 We think of his

Koneletn a

tfve oieSf " Practlcal sagacity and scientific poise ;

2SJSE?0 of the analytic sense which realizes that

the inundation of words and the makin^

O

of many books around him are not increasing the
sum-total of insight and wisdom ; of his resolution
to stick to what is sound and solid in life and let
the problematic and nebulous go. Yet with all
this sober sanity we note his ready alertness, on
survey kis common-sense level, to " see what is
the good thing for the sons of men to
do under the heavens all the days of their life."
This is not Sadduceeism as yet, for it is not yet
congealed into indifferentism and negation ; it is,
however, the Sadducaic bent and attitude, in that
still healthy state which reveals it as primarily
a reaction against the ScJiwarmerei of unbased
imaginations deeming themselves piety. And all
Koheleth's book is the programme of good judg
ment and livable life, which is the outcome of
this attitude.

Of the two tendencies thus revealing themselves

"Probably the nearest approximation to their [the Saddu
cees'] religious attitude known to us, is to be found in the scepti
cal 'Preacher' of the Book of Ecclesiastes." — Bartlet, The
Apostolic Age, page xxxiv.

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 61

between Koheleth's lines, it is doubtless well that
Pharisaism afterward proved the more vital strain.
It was better adapted, in the fierce strug
gles that ensued, to keep the heart open

,, « tendencies.

to things unseen, to preserve the finer
spiritual susceptibilities from atrophy. And if in
some things it forced its zeal too far, making its
loyalty to rabbinic law a hardness and despot-
ism? — Well, it is easier to prune a too luxuriant
growth than to graft life into dead wood. It is no
small distinction for a sect even the " most strait-
est " to have left, when all allowance is made for
spiritual shrinkage, a Saul of Tarsus as product.
The Sadducaic bent, on the other hand, if it
assert itself too exclusively, incurs the risk that
inheres in every fight for a negation ; its triumph
is in the end the triumph of worldliness and spir
itual inertia. After all, it is merely as a strain
in a larger-furnished character, as a regulative
balance and sanity, not as a hard propaganda
and class distinction, that this bent can be trusted
to control in the large evolution of manhood. It
must be rather a bridle than a spur. This is
how it appears in the book before us. It is a
warning of sturdy sense, scientific discernment,
asserting the dues of the other side, reaching be
neath some too short and easy solution of the
problem of life, to grasp a solution that shall be

62 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

valid for all time. And though it has incurred
the suspicion of the orthodox and conventional,
we cannot doubt that it has supplied an essen
tial element to rescue the venerable structure of
Mosaism from insidious weakening influences and
save it foi* the solider destiny which the ages were
preparing for it.

IV

In this encounter with his time, the intensity

of Koheleth's conviction and the directness of his

penetration to the roots of things beget

Koheleth's

absoluteness an absoluteness of tone and touch which

of assertion,

mean?1*11* Ca^S ^6re ^Or examinati°n> on account
of the misapprehensions from which it
has suffered.

He sees nothing in half light. He puts in no
shadings, no vanishing-points, no saving clauses.

Every verdict on life lies before us in
Instances of ,
this peculiar the absolute issue to which it ultimately

statement J

passim1611 re(luces. If the enterprise in which he
embarks is disappointing, he is not con
cerned to measure salvage or shrinkage ; he an
nounces sweepingly that it is all vanity and a chase
after wind. Nor this alone ; he makes it merely a
particular case under an estimate which applies
in superlative degree to the whole world of designs
and labors, and makes the Leitmotiv of his book

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 63

vanity of vanities. It is not enough for hiih to say
that earthly investments yield discouragingly small
percentage ; there is no profit under the sun ; there
is no profit in a life itself that is merely waiting
for death or banking on what comes after. He
has no patience to look for such shadowy gleams
of the hereafter as speculation may suggest ; he
cuts the knot by asserting, No one knows what
shall be. It does not suit his realistic spirit to
say the one compensation is to make the present
life livable ; he reduces life to its absolute low
est terms, saying there is nothing better than to
eat and drink and rejoice in your labor. All this
coordinates itself with Koheleth's personality and
point of view. It is in part a matter of literary
style, using the dialect of concentrated results
rather than of refined and labored processes ; in
part an intense conviction and insight which is
stung to set forth in startling terms the faUacies
to which the ideals of the age are tending. For
the rest, the compensations and saving clauses,
which are by no means wanting, will in part come
out between the lines, but for the most and indeed
overwhelming part will rise as the fair and strong
and sufficient result of Koheleth's wholesomer
point of view. His is a case wherein it is of car
dinal importance to keep constant track of the
end to which he is steering, the supreme harmony

64 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

into which all his modulations and discords re
solve.

Here is the place, therefore, to consider his
alleged pessimism. I spoke just above of misap
prehensions : there has been no more
Koholeth's - ., - , <, ,-,

alleged pes- fruitful source of these than has been
simism, and

how much created by the superficial identification
there Is in it.

of his thought with that of the Schopen
hauer school. It has become one of the unques
tioned dicta of criticism that Koheleth — or rather
part of him, for critics have taken to carving him
up nowadays — was radically pessimistic. The
original core of his book, the dissecters assert,
was of this tone, the work, as Professor Siegfried
expresses it, of a " pessimistic philosopher, a Jew
who had suffered shipwreck of faith ; " and this
Jew made such a dismal job of it that forthwith a
small army of glossators, in the interests of Epi
cureanism, Wisdom, pietism, and sundry other
things, set to work to patch up the book for a de
cent appeal to an orthodox public.1 Now if Kohe-
leth's pessimism is so momentous a matter as all
this, it will not do, of course, to belittle it ; and
undeniably there are many things in his book

1 For a fuller account of Professor Siegfried's dissection of
the book, which the reader is quite welcome to accept if he
chooses, and which at any rate has interest as a curiosity of
literary judgment, see page 102 below.

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 65

which, uncoordinated with their trend and context,
look decidedly pessimistic. To see how weighty
and how controlling this strain is, we must note
with care the relative emphasis of things, and the
spirit of the man.

Koheleth faces the worst. We are left in no
doubt of that. The pitiless universal round, with
its guillotine of death always busy, the

crookedness of the times and of the whole thorough

ness of his
organized world, the enigmas of fate

and the unappeasable soul, the perver
sions into which men will push even their supreme
endowment of wisdom, — no abyss of evil in all
these but is unflinchingly fathomed and its import
discounted. Nor does he mince matters in the
telling. If any utmost absoluteness of statement
can name ?,n element of the case that there is no
getting beyond, that is the thing to take into the
account. He uses every implication of his assumed
personality and royal position to see life steadily
and see it whole, evils and all.

But the question that rises here is, Why does
Koheleth bring all this up, and that too in such
a robust ringing tone ? That is not the The
way of the dyed-in-the-wool pessimist, ^anrises
Guy de Maupassant grappled with the lacts-
murky elements of life, and went under. Does
Koheleth's stalwart confronting of the worst be-

66 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

token a soul beaten and despairing, or a soul self-
mastered and victorious ? Nay, there is no whin
ing here, no knuckling under. Nor does this
buoyant tone come from merely airing a new
diagnosis of life. It is not Koheleth's discovery
alone, nor needing proof, but an experience
that may be affirmed without fear of gainsaying,
that every work which looks outside itself for
compensation obtains but dust and vanity ; that
the universe of God's making must be put up on
some other principle than toil and wages, invest
ments and profits. The problem does not work out
that way ; you cannot in any quest of life make
it balance up so. But what then ? Here,

v. 85 ; in the centre of things, is a soul that
can weigh it all and need not be crushed
by it ; a soul God-gifted, endowed, if it will ac

cept them, with wisdom and knowledge
Survey 1.

!i6' 129 anc^ J0^' W^k a Por^on anc^ work all its

own, and a capacity of unalloyed con

tentment right here at home. There is nothing

better for man than this. There is nothing in the

universe to take this portion away. God

Survey 11.

67Q; m. himself has accepted man's best work.
142.' Why look away from this lot and life,

then, to secure some extrinsic reward or escape
some extrinsic disaster? That way it is, in fact,
that the real blackness of outlook, the certainty of

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 67

disappointment lies ; there is where to locate your
pessimism. As soon as for your life's supreme
blessedness you forsake the inner citadel of your
soul, or put your soul up in the market for sale,
it is all vanity.

Here, then, is what Koheleth's pessimism re
duces to: a spirit that, while it owns and dis
counts the worst, opens up a realm of

The soul
mastery on which the worst, whether in redeemed

•> from the

present or future, has no power. It
makes a good deal of difference whether
you face your environment in a spirit of surren
der or in the spirit of victory; whether it is
mightier than you or you consciously greater than
it. Must we not, then, revise Professor Siegfried's
judgment ? Instead of being " a Jew who has
made shipwreck of faith," Koheleth is a Jew who
is making ruins of the too flimsy faith, the too
shallow and thrifty philosophy, of his generation.
To orient his verdict on life, therefore, we may
say, Koheleth handles the terms of pessimism, but

is not a pessimist. The point at which

. ,. . Koheleth's
his appraisal of life comes to solution is pessimistic

affirmations

indeed well on toward the opposite pole,

The vanity which he so freely affirms,

regarded as a cosmic fact, is not a thesis

to be proved, as if his final concern were to leave

the human soul weltering in a chaos of hopeless-

68 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

ness ; it is a reality to be conceded and dared to its
worst, on the way to a higher ground, a more solid
truth of manhood, which is to be its compensation
and antidote. Here, I think, is where the inter
preters of Koheleth have made their fundamental
mistake. The thirty-eight iterations of vanity have
proved too much for them ; what other utterance
than that, forsooth, can poll such an overwhelm
ing vote? Accordingly, in all their estimates of
the stress-point of his argument, their heads were
so filled with the idea that he is proving vanity —
as if it needed proof — that the offset counted for
nothing, or was regarded as an appendage stuck
on by a glossator. In all their divisions of his
thought, too, they have taken it as a duty to make
every vista end in some hopeless outlook. The
question that immediately follows his initial ex
clamation, — "What profit hath man in all his
labor ? " — in the line of this same view is inter
preted as "eine verneinende Frage," that is to
say, an oratorical interrogation equivalent to em
phasized denial ; — what profit ? as much as to
say, or rather bitterly to attest, no profit at all.
This is undeniably a part of its implication ; for
Koheleth saw a world full of profitless pursuits
and fancies from which he would warn his heedless
age. But may he not also, in part, have asked the
question in order to answer it ? That certainly

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 69

seems more nearly his object when he asks the
same question again in the third chapter ; and
there an answer is beginning to glimmer Survey
into sight. In fact, as he goes on in the u' 21t
sequel to the question, things read increasingly as
if, though the first implication was against it, he
really had an answer in reserve, which, coming to
light in the course of the discussion, would reveal
that there is something, call it profit or what you
will, something very near home and accessible to
all, which offsets the darkest outlook that environ
ment can give. This, I believe, is his real object ;
and certain it is that the trend of his book, its
large sweep and power, culminates in something
that no pessimism can invade.

V

With such compensations as these coming into
the field of vision, it is high time to get out of
our critical Slough of Despond. These
sombre pronouncements of Koheleth's,

. . , points of de-

made with such uncompromising abso- parture, to
r ° consider his

luteness, are really his points of depar-

ture rather than his points of approach ;

they are the preliminary veto which he passes

upon the fallacious notions of his time and dis

pensation, before going on to name the counter

poise, the solid yield, of his own ideal of life. The

70 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

point of approach, therefore, the whole positive
half of the problem, remains to be considered.

If, then, all that his age is questing for is vanity,
with disillusion and bootless expectation at the end

of every vista, what may man seek, on
The meagre , . , 0 -rP -,

basis he what stay his soul ? If man can know
seems to

have left to nothing of futurity, or of the scenery
build upon.

beyond the grave, what can he know, to

fill the void ? Koheleth's negations have covered
the field so sweepingly that at first thought it
would seem as if nothing but a sorry salvage, a
meagre flotsam and jetsam of life elements could
be rescued from his wreck of worlds. Many have
thought so, and made it the prevailing vogue to
think so. What motive would there be to live,
they ask, without the sure knowledge that in a
future existence our good deeds will be rewarded,
our neighbor's iniquities punished, and in general
the crooked made straight, the lacking numbered ?
What is there to make life worth living at all, if
everything reveals its vanity by ending where it
began ?

Before we deem Koheleth's positive contribu
tion to life so slender, however, let us
hear him out. His tone, while it vi-

6e

however, brates with sad sympathy, rings also in
who speaks.

no uncertain notes of cheer and courage.

He is bringing, too, the matter-of-fact mind to the

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 71

problem ; and while the solution may not be so
brilliant and showy, it is something to the point
if it makes np in substantial fibre, and in the qual
ities that hold from the surface all the way through.

VI

Let us look first at what looms up largest and
has caused most estrangement, his agnosticism.
"No one knoweth what shall be," is
the way he puts it, " for how it shall be,
who shall tell him ? " The blunt wording
in which he always expresses his denial conveys
something of its animus. As we have seen, he is
irritated by the murmur of vapid speculation
around him, so Greek and esthetic and voluble ;
he, a man whose mind craves plain fact and rea
son, whose vision of the future must wait until it
can be projected from the insights and the data of
the present.

If, then, this wave of imaginative philosophy is
ruled out, what has the realm of observable fact
to reveal by way of indemnity? Kohe- matliashe
leth's tone is not that of a baffled ex- ^bring,^
plorer ; he would hardly have announced |act, as ofl-
vanity and futility with such exultant
absoluteness, if he had returned from his expedi
tions in life empty handed.

Well, as he goes on, giving his heart " to ex-

72 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

plore and survey by wisdom concerning all that is
wrought under the heavens," there keep coming to
Some signi- v*ew mysterious traits of human nature
oMnumui*8 wni°n as investigator he is bound to
SS?ee-no1 1 note, yet which transcend the idiom of
a law-ridden, earth-bound life. For one
thing, there is the tyrannous wisdom-hunger itself,
a deep unrest, like a kind of obsession, or as Kohe-
leth describes it, " a sad toil which God hath
given to the sons of men to toil there
with." What does this mean, if man's
life is given only to be tethered to this field of
sense like that of an animal ? To be sure, Kohe-
leth neither asks nor answers this question ; he
merely records the strange fact, and commits him
self to its prompting. Then again, as he confronts
the leveler Death, and contemplates himself lying
down in the dust with the fool, he is conscious of
having laid out on life a most unpractical super-
Survey fluity of wisdom ; " I said in my heart,
As is the destiny of the fool, so also shall
it befall even me ; why then am I wise beyond the
demand ? " A hard question this, — what becomes
of all this waste of wisdom, life's rarest product ?
Nor does Koheleth profess to answer it ; he notes
the anomaly and goes on. Still again he brings
up the ever present fact that the manhood soul in
this world's range of ideals is a misfit, is never

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 73

adjusted to its environment. " All the labor of
man," says Koheleth, " is for his mouth, yet also
is the soul not filled." So it goes, as Surveylv.
puzzle after puzzle emerges from Kohe- 26<
leth's exploration of life. There is in this prison-
house of earth a strange surge of soul, as it were
the uprising of a giant, to be reckoned with and
motived; and if we make nothing by postpon
ing the solution to an imagined future, no more
can these cramped worldly confines compass it.
We may take Browning's words as an accurate
expression, in nineteenth-century words, of the
Koheleth spirit : —

" I cannot chain my soul : it will not rest
In its clay prison, this most narrow sphere :
It has strange impulse, tendency, desire,
Which nowise I account for nor explain, pauUmffi

But cannot stifle, being bound to trust 593-600.

All f eeings equally, to hear all sides :
How can my life indulge them ? yet they live,
Referring to some state of life unknown."

That is it : these mysterious pulsations of human
greatness are a cumulative reference, an effort of
adjustment, to some state of life unknown. And
the burden of making it known, if he so insists on
ignoring a solution beyond death, rests on Kohe
leth.

Nor is he unmindful of the trust. What that
state or standard of life is, comes out as clear as

74 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

his Mosaic era has data for, as clear as the law-
bound character needs in any era. I have re-
Koheietn's serve^ his profoundest recognition of
recognition ^he mannoO(l mystery for mention here
manhood because I regard it as the key and focus
mystery. ag wejj ag ^e v{^

point from which his sane vista of life opens. He
arrives at it through his description of times and
seasons, which description, discovering that there
is a time for everything, and that the timeliness
of everything is its beauty, leads him to repeat,
Survey ^is time not despairingly, his ques

tion of the beginning, " What profit
hath the worker in that wherein he laboreth?"
From this, as if setting himself to answer, he goes
survey on to sav> " I have seen the toil which

God hath given to the sons of men, to
toil therein. Everything hath he made beautiful
in its time ; also he hath put eternity in their
heart, — yet not so that man findeth out the work
which God hath wrought, from the beginning, and
to the end." This sets the whole matter of the
doctrine of immortality, with its bounds of know
ledge and ignorance, on its true plane, and in so
doing puts back more than Koheleth's avowed
agnosticism has taken away. It brings the su
preme solution down, or rather up, to the life

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 75

intrinsic, the life that for its reward and blessed
ness instead of dreaming of a vague time not now,
or of a shadowy place somewhere else, is rather
working out the present demands of duty in an
energy which consciously derives not of the ani
mal nor of the worldly, but of the eternal. This,
then, is what those strange pulsations of manhood
greatness reduce to in their occasion and degree,
— eternity in the heart, doing its hidden work
of shaping life in its own image. Its workings are
what Dr. Newman Smyth describes as Smyth
"the real involutions within present life creeds*1

of future evolutions of man's being."

It has reached deeper than intellect, to the sphere

of the will and the ordained work. Therefore the

intellect, the curious investigating or imagining

faculty, can afford to ignore its subtle problems,

leaving them for the fitting time and sphere to

reveal.

Here is where Koheleth corrects not only his
own age's wordy philosophy, but an inveterate
misconception of all times. Somehow
man has never been able to get rid of ideaoi
the idea that revelation, instead of be- corrects an

inveterate

ing what its name signifies, an unfold- misconcep-

ing of the soul, is fortune-telling ; and

to this day men are as keen as ever to have their

76 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

post-obituary condition mapped out and portrayed.1
Koheleth is more modern than they ; more bibli
cal, too, in the midst of a Bible which in this
aspect he has done his royal share to make the
sanest book in the world. By the side of his view
the philosophizings that so irritate him look in
effably thin and childish. That — he virtually
says — is not the kind of eternity to seek, that is
not what the mystic throb within us means : not
divination of futurity nor disclosure of hidden be
ginnings ; not an insight that greatly transcends
the present. But eternity is there, nevertheless;
a surge, a pulsation deriving from the permanent
and illimitable, and conforming life and work
thereto as to an unseen pattern. Not in those
tracts of sky, not in the unmeasured stretches of
time ; the eternity for man is in the heart, which
adjusts itself to the all, as the needle, pointing to
the pole, adjusts itself to the magnetic energy of
the globe. Thus the vital outlook beyond is not
left wholly dark. It is revealing itself all the

1 " Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular no
tion of a revelation is that it is a telling- of fortunes. In past
oracles of the soul the understanding- seeks to find answers to
sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God how long men
shall exist, what their hands shall do and who shall be their
company, adding- names and dates and places. But we must
pick no locks. We must check this low curiosity. An answer
in words is delusive ; it is really no answer to the questions you
ask." — Emerson, Essay on The Over-Soul.

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 77

while, through what is deepest and most destiny-
making in us.1

To have defined man's relation to eternity thus
is to have put the soul into the realm of the abso
lute and intrinsic, where the mere ques- Koheleth
tion of a change of worlds has very little ^e^galues
significance. It makes no difference, SSiSc"4
other than as a curious scientific prob- J$e7t?onsof
lem, what we find out about it ; the thing

that is of avail, and that makes Kohe-
leth's counsel so sane, is that immortality, in all
the substance and principle of it, is made a present
possession. In other words, the paramount con
cern is with the life itself, and in itself, without
disturbing reference to time or environment. It is
all one life. The soul can discard empty dreams
of the future because already the power that rolls

" It is not altogether true to real life now to say, as we so
often hear it said by worldly men, that we know nothing about
the future life, and have nothing here to do with it. For the
present is potentially the future. The world beyond is at many
points of human experience a felt pressure upon this world. We
know the future for better or for worse by the tendencies of
conduct now toward further good or evil. What gravitation is
among the constellations, we know by gravity upon this earth.
We have some prescience of our future life after death very
much as the child has foreknowledge of possible manhood or
womanhood in its child-consciousness of being. Immortality, in
one word, is the present spiritual implication of our life. The
future life is naturally involved in present life." — Smyth,
Personal Creeds, p. 145.

78 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

on through the future is the power that is mould
ing its daily character. Instead of waiting for its
heaven, or getting it built on some crude sensual
plan, it is making heaven every day, secreting it,
as it were, according to an eternal vitalizing prin
ciple. The rest it can leave to its time and order.
Get the soul in true working order before God,
wherein its healthy state reveals itself by rejoic
ing in its divinely allotted work, and it may be
trusted to remain so unaffected by a change of
Survey worlds ; and therefore at the end, when
vii. 41. ^e (jug|. returns to earth as it was, it is
enough that the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Koheleth is true to his keynote. As if deter
mined to emphasize the issue he joins with his time,

he can describe life with all poetic full-
How the r

portrayal of ness an(^ Beauty down to the very end
accentuates °^ °^ a£e ' ^ut Jus* tnere? where his
ills view. contemporaries' imaginings begin, he
stops short. Yet with eternity pulsing in the heart,
he has more than made up the lack ; he has ex
changed fancy for vital substance.

VII

Whether he will make a similar compensation
in the case of that other point of departure, that
absolute concluding of all under vanity, remains
now to be seen. It is too much to ask of his era,

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 79

perhaps, that his pessimistic strain should be set
off by pure optimism; but that he should Koheletll,s
point his age to a solid meliorism, a
m.odus vivendi that may well counter-
balance the evils of any age, seems
guaranteed by the strong vein of good to lt"
sense and courage which has thus far character
ized his encounter with his time.

As related to the world's reception of it, this
note of vanity and disillusion has fared, in the
realm of sentiment, very differently from
his agnosticism. Men have been fain to JJen tunto
reject the latter; have been reluctant, JisSK-81118
perhaps, to own how little solid sub- ment
stance, how little real grounding, lay under their too
facile dreams. To reduce their world to a final
residuum of vanity, on the other hand, they were
nothing loth ; it was an idea round which cheap
emotions could play and pose as vastly experienced ;
it drew the world-weary, the biases, and men of the
melancholy Jacques type. Vanity of vanities has
always been one of the popular sentiments of the
world, yet never more than half believed. To take
it in Koheleth's dead-earnest, absolute spirit, and
above all to concede it as the preliminary to some
thing that is not vanity, has been far from the
world's superficial temper.

Koheleth treats his generation much as we treat

80 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

a man who thinks he has found a road to sudden
wealth, — some Mississippi scheme, or some .pro
ject of extracting gold from sea water.
Koheieth's Be warned, we say chillingly to such a
Seosccasioii man's enthusiasm; there is nothing in
your scheme but disappointment. Be
wise ; it is all vanity, what profit ? Koheleth urges
in similar manner on his age. What is all vanity ?
we have almost forgotten to ask. It looks as if his
cry, at least in the first instance, had a very con
crete and pressing occasion. And I think the occa
sion I have already described was concrete enough.
The new wave of speculative philosophy did not
spend itself wholly on one doctrine ; it threw open
all the windows of imagination, and set men look
ing for some less austere outlet of life, some amen
ity of beauty or luxury or ease, to satisfy a crav
ing that had long slumbered but was now wide
awake. All this was in the direction, not of base
ness or degeneration, but of spiritual growth ; it
must be met, therefore, by wise caution rather than
by denunciation ; the expanding spirit must be
warned and guided, so that its growth might be
along sound and solid lines.

As Koheleth, responding to his first impulse of
reaction, seeks in his mind how to deal with this
prevalent sentiment, he begins, I imagine, at the
fountain-head, where men are seeking escape to

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 81

another world. But from the veto he sets on this
movement his thoughts go outward, trying one
thing after another, tearing away the

illusions from all, until he has made a Koheietii's

reaction.
clean sweep, and found the hopes that

are centred in this world just as fallacious as the
hopes that are centred in a world to come. Not
only your dreams of other realms, he virtually
says, but the cherished objects of this life, the
things in which you embark your soul's energies
for profit, turn out to be all of the same disappoint
ing character. The rewards they promise are no
rewards at all, and your soul is left as lean and
hungry as before. I have tried it, he says, and
I know.

By the time he is ready to write his book, there
fore, the conviction of universal vanity has become
such a fire in his bones that it breaks
in to the heedless age as his initial ex- Oi°vanitybe^

clamation, claiming first vent, so to say, initial ex-
' , . . rm. / clamation.

as a truth beyond gainsaying, ihis by

no means indicates, however, that the conviction
ends where it began. The very exultancy of its
tone, as already said, is against such an event
ual welter of gloom. Rather, the clean sweep that
he has made is the preliminary to a positive struc
ture of cheer, the tabula rasa on which, line by
line, he sets himself to write a fairer record.

82 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

So as he goes on with the detailed account of

his induction of life, things begin to come out that

have a different look. — survivals of the

How the oH-

istycomeaout wreck> as ** were? little things perhaps
tweentta6" wnic^ at first one might be inclined to
throw away. For one thing, go however
deep he will, there is still the heart within him
rising superior to all that it works — or wallows —

Survey m ; as ^e ca^s **» " ^is heart guiding
i. 31. by wisdom," never becoming the thrall

of an environment, convivial or esthetic or sen-
Survey sua^ ^is is surely a fact worth noting.
1. 22. Then again, his wisdom ; — in spite of

the fact that its discoveries are subject like all else
Survey ^° van^y? he records that his wisdom
stands by him, a kind of permanent
asset, in the midst of so much that crumbles ; as
Survey superior to folly, he says, as light to dark-
L 74a ness. Even of things all mortal, suppos

ing them so, there is infinite choice ; there is the
soul discovering and cherishing its life idiom. Yet
again, as he thinks over those great enterprises
Of survey wnicn as soon as *ne7 were done and ex
ternalized, so to say, were a disgust and
a weariness, he recalls that in the working of them
Survey ou* ne ^a^ keen delight ; as he expresses
it, " his heart derived joy from all his
labor." The joy was not in the thing done, but

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 83

in the doing of it ; there was something in the way
his heart twined itself round its congenial occupa
tion which seemed to have deep suggestions for the
solution of the problem of life. It was at least a joy
which depended on no exotic, imported expedient ;
and the fact that it was a joy which sweetened
and normalized all the homely functions of life
stamped it as the portion to which man is born,
the individual gift of God. A universalized joy it
was, too ; not for kings alone, nor for the leisured
and luxurious ; not even for those who, wrestling
with the conditions of existence, have managed
to get on top ; but for the staple representative
man who has to work for a living. This, when we
come to think of it, has brought us far above the
quicksands of vanity. Beginning with a question
which sought profit to man " in all his
labor," Koheleth gradually disengages
it from its claim to that profit which he identi
fies with vanity, and when he reaches the ground
whereon aJl can stand and rejoice together, it
proves to be the ground of the labor itself. We
are not surprised, therefore, to hear the conclusion
at which he not once but many times Survey
arrives : " Wherefore I saw that there 1L 67>
is nothing better than that a man should rejoice
in his own work ; for that is his portion. For who
shall bring him to see what shall be after him ? "

84 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

There is nothing, I am inclined to think, that has
had $uch scant justice at the hands of Koheleth's
interpreters as this his gospel of work.
It has been almost invariably ignored

hasbeen by the side of the eating and drinking
with which it is so generally associated.
Koheleth has accordingly — or a part of him, in
these modern times of critical dissection — been
identified with Epicureanism ; as if after all his
desperately earnest quest for the highest good of
life, he had reduced his ideal to praise of gorging
and guzzling and what young folks call " having
a good time." No book was ever less Epicurean
than his. Note the passages wherein he mentions
Surveys! eating and drinking, and you always
liiA'is'; v? ' fi11^ a workingman there, a man who can
92, 140. (jraw Up to table with a good healthful
appetite, and sleep sweetly whether he eat little

or much, because he has found his work,
Survey

m- 97- the expression of his plans and his skill

and his individuality, and takes it as what God

meant him to have, and makes it his

i/survey own by rejoicing in it. There is nothing

better for man than this, Koheleth avers ;

nay, in the solid and usable sense this comprehends

it all.

The truth is, Koheleth's blunt absoluteness of
tone has again deceived interpreters here, as it did

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 85

in the case of his alleged pessimism. He has been
regarded as a down-hearted melancholy man, who

when he got down to saying nothing is

, , . , , . . The manner

better than to eat and drink and rejoice in which it

is set forth

in work was at a kind of last resort, a **& made

comely.

pis-aller, only one degree this side of
nothing at all. But it will be noted that he ex
presses it so only to begin with, while he is in the
heat of his plea against those who are seeking
something more congenial or poetic or profitable.
It is, so to say, the every-day staple, to which the
condiments may be added as occasion rises. He re
duces his good to lowest and homeliest, but by that
very means to most universal terms. As he goes
on, however, bringing his gospel of happy work to
bear on the various situations of life, he begins
to embellish it for its own sake, and dwell on it
fondly as " a good that is comely," and Survey m<
roll up for it a momentum of enthusiasm ; 117t
until at its last and most amplified mention it has
become a rather elaborate programme of life : -

" Go thou, eat thy bread with gladness, and drink
with merry heart thy wine ; for already hath God ac
cepted thy works. At every season let thy Survey v
garments be white, and oil upon thy head 1*0-155.
not be lacking. Prove life with a woman whom thou
lovest, all the days of thy vapor-life which God hath
given thee under the sun — all the days of thy vanity ;

86 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

for this is thy portion in life, and in thy labor which
thou laborest under the sun. All that thy hand findeth
to do, do with thy might ; for there is no work, nor
cleverness, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave
whither thou goest."

Here, it would seem, is a compensation, an
offset to vanity, which Koheleth has very deeply
The case a* heart. And we can see now what is
summed up. ^e solid ground toward which the whole
course of his book has been advancing. Against
the perverseness of environment and fate he sets
the intrinsic man, for whom he provides a world
within, and a work wherein he can be man and
master of his fate. All this lifts the book grandly
out of its sad setting and furnishes a pulsation of
courage and good cheer, in the strength of which
man can leave brooding cares and bear his weight
on the common blessings that make life livable.

We are now in position to see Low it is that

when Koheleth raises the question, " What profit

hath man in all his labor ? " he has in

The Ques
tion of pro- mind not only an implied negative but
Jit, with its ' .

Imswer an even*ua^ answer. It is frankly nega
tive at first because it looks only at ex
ternals ; at the pay which men value as the reward
and equivalent of their work, at the profits for
the sake of which so many a life is virtually put
up for sale, and beyond that at the cosmic round

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 87

which with its self-completing laws of being seems
to furnish the vast archetype of it all. In that
sense of his work there is no profit. When the
exchange is complete, the work done and the life
lived, there is no residuum of enrichment ; what
shall a man give, what shall he expect from the
universe, in exchange for his soul ? As Koheleth
goes on, however, associating his work more inti
mately with joy and health and good cheer, the
negative implication grows dimmer and disap
pears. We cannot do justice to the facts of life
without owning that in the work itself, with its
involvement of talent and use and skill, there
may be a residuum of noble character ; so the
work, being the expression of manhood, is its own
reward, neither to be bought nor sold. And that
this is so, the joy that informs it is the attes
tation. Joy is the expression of well-being, the
announcement that the powers of life are making
music together ; and to see this rising out of the
work which is our portion is but another way of
recognizing that life is an intrinsic thing.

It is by this way of joy in one's individual work,
a way open to every lowliest man, that Koheleth
seizes and applies the principle which Howt3llg
gives value to the Greek movement Ssthettodoor
around him. It was, as I have said, a ofuie'
movement of growth, from which Koheleth too was

88 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

deriving, though perhaps unconsciously, his share
of benefit. There was doubtless a mighty and in
general wholesome craving to give the esthetic
side of life something of its due. The Hebrew
religion, austerely practical, had subdued the idol
atrous tendencies which manifest themselves in
sensuous ways, and was absorbed in the minute
exploitation of its law. The national genius was
not esthetic, not ideal ; we see that in the fact
that no branch of the fine arts, except perhaps
sacred poetry and music, was resorted to as a re
lief and emancipation of the soul. What their

Greek neighbors expressed in sculpture
Wisdom, St. , ° JIM

Paul calls it, and architecture and philosophy, the

1 Cor. i. 22.

Hebrews laid out on their worship of
Jehovah ; and the vitality of their religious ideas
is their imperishable monument. But we can well
think that when, as in Koheleth's time, the lamp
burned a little dim in the house of the Lord,
the coming of the Hellenic influence, a luxury of
reveries and arts and refinements, may have been
like a great springtide in all one starved side of
life. And this plea for joy in work is the bluff
way in which Koheleth meets it. It looks bald
and forbidding at first, until we come to see that
it strikes for the very root of the matter. Every
great or beautiful work that has launched out in
life beyond the desire or possibility of reward, and

KOHELETH'S RESPONSE TO HIS TIME 89

made achievements that cannot be bought or sold,
has obeyed the same principle. Art, as men are
denning it nowadays, is the expression of joy in
work. The supreme reaches of life, in what man
creates and in what expresses his truest individu
ality, are utterly dead to the idea of profit ; there
is nothing to exchange them for. In the lower
work, too, even in the routine and drudgery which
is so common a lot, here is the one way to make
life livable. The man who tends a machine may
learn to love his machine for the very skill and
delicacy and inventive wisdom of which it is the
almost living embodiment. As William Morris,
whose career was a living commentary on Ko-
heleth, expresses it : " It seems to me that the
real way to enjoy life is to accept all its necessary
ordinary details and turn them into pleasures by
taking interest in them."

" There are but two possessions," says Profes
sor Carl Hilty, " which may be attained by persons
of every condition, which never desert Whatsolld
one through life, and are a constant con- g^S^8
solation in misfortune. These are work JiPSmo has
and love. Those who shut these bless
ings out of life commit a greater sin than suicide.
They do not even know what it is that they throw
away. Rest without work is a thing which in
this life one cannot endure." Of these two pos-

90 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

sessions Koheleth, rebuking the too self-indulgent
dreams of his age, has fallen back on the first, on

work ; and out of it, as accepted in joy,
Happiness, has drawn for life a noble resource of

courage and cheer. From the large sig
nificance of the second, from the full meaning
of love as a life power, his eyes are still holden ;
it is too early in the world's years, it is not yet
the fullness of the times. And this, which we re
cognize as the side on which the book is lacking,
is the deep reason why with all its cheer the strain
of the book is ineffably sad. One possession, which
he has rescued from the chaos of vanities and illu
sions, which by disengaging it from the paltry
association of barter he has added to the surplus
age side of the soul's account, is a possession be
yond price, a crown of the old dispensation, a solid
asset of upbuilding as far as it goes.

CHAPTER III

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER

IN its broad logical effect the Book of Koheleth
resolves itself into a premise and a conclusion.
The premise, conceded as beyond ques
tion, is the austere world fact in whose

toils the soul of manhood is involved, makes lor

character.
and which it cannot escape. Whatever

the solution of things at which the sage arrives,
he must take into the account this universal vanity
of endeavor, this imprisoning fate, this dearth of
clear outlook, as a truth which proves itself.

" It is the echo of time ; and he whose heart
Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech pJJJJJjj!*'
Was copied from a human tongue, can never BUS, 11.

Recall when he was living yet knew not this."

The conclusion, not appended as to a train of rea
soning, but welling up everywhere and orbing pro
gressively into definiteness, is the answer to the
implicit question, What shall the man do about it ?
what manner of man shall he be ? This growing
answer, coordinated and made unitary, is the issue
in character.

92 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

In character, we say ; and here we are using

the new dialect which Koheleth's time and the

strain of Wisdom that he represents are

ter Issue beginning to demand. " An observer of

menting the the course of history at this time," says
religious.

Professor Smith, " might have antici
pated the fading out of vital Jewish religion."

True, no doubt ; and yet an observer of

Smith, Old

Testament ^he deeper spiritual currents may have
page 440. seen sjgns that left the situation not
wholly deplorable. For human nature has many
doors of expression, and when one issue has ful
filled itself, another, succeeding, may take its vital
ity and perpetuate an equally genuine strain of
manhood. Wisdom, from the period of the early
Proverbs down, had been clearing the ground for
a new expression of life, and so when the religious
impulse seemed to be losing its edge, as it was
bound sooner or later to do, a fresh energy was
ready to supplement without superseding the old ;
to be laid out not on objects of devotion, but on
objects of activity. In other words, here in Kohe
leth's body of counsel transition is made from life
expressed in terms of religion to life expressed in
terms of character, from the sacred to the secular,
or perhaps it would be more exact to say, from
the one-sided man to the all-round man. It is all
one life ; it can tolerate no schism and remain

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 93

integral. But the first look of this new expression,
until we see what it has retained of the old, may
seem like a decay and disintegration. It is not so
much that as a shifting of emphasis. Religion has
had the stress heretofore ; in prophetic word, in
devout Temple songs, in that law which has come
to be regarded as the sacred word of Jehovah, in
the elaborate ritual of the sanctuary. It is time
now to gather the fruits of Wisdom, as the wise
heart puts faith in itself and lays hold on a prac
tical world.

That this is no casting off of the religious atti
tude and spirit, but its ally and helpmate, is shown
in the large sanity of its result. Wis
dom, working on its independent line, with?™011
has come to identify its ideals with those
of religion. To be reverent and righteous is to
be wise ; to be ungodly is to be a fool ; the very
beginning of wisdom, as all the sages agree, is the
fear of God. There is no lack of harmony between
the sages on the one side and the scribes and
psalmists and prophets on the other. But because
the religious expression of life is already well cared
for, it may be taken for granted ; and Wisdom,
going on from this, may wreak its thought and
energies on the management of its world. There
is much that needs counsel here ; life is not an
affair of the Sabbath and of the Temple only, but

94 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

of every day and of common industries and rela
tions. This is Koheleth's sphere. May it not be,
then, that in Koheleth's age religion is dying in
order to rise again, is taking on an expression
more vital because more searching, in learning to
use its practical secular energies? It is still the
fear of God and the keeping of commandments,
working not through dying forms or pietistic lingo,
but through a character that does its work and is
silent.

In order to judge the distinctive fibre of the
character to which Koheleth's counsel is con
formed, we must, to begin with, take

The ground-

Sfer'tatto ^resn no*e °^ I"8 era> anc^ *ne grounding
coTs?iou£g ii; was adapted to give. For his man is
Eoheietii'g *ne creature not of the book alone but

of the time, with the book as interpreter
and guide.

Koheleth's era, " the night of legalism," just
when at its central point it becomes self-conscious

and recognizes its condition as a night,

The old dis
pensation connotes a character to correspond, the
and its . .

nenc?ior character adapted to a world lying in
character. ^e dimness of an earlier spiritual stage.
It is in a sense our disadvantage that we have to
speak of this Old Testament era, describing its

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 95

immaturities and marking its limits, as if it were
past. It is only the fact that we look back upon
it from an era of greater light which Seeal)ovei
makes us read it so. The old dispensa- i7g|qq.,
tion, the dispensation of law and subjec
tion, is always with us. It must stay as long as
we live the life of the body and the life of the
world ; it is here not to pass but to be fulfilled. If
the soul, kicking against the pricks, intensifies its
natural subjection into bondage, it is the soul's
own unwisdom. If a larger dispensation, bring
ing truth and freedom, ever supersedes the old, it
supersedes by including the old in full, no jot or
tittle lacking, and all revitalized to full spiritual
expression. Therefore the character that is fitted
to move at home in the twilight era, and use its
conditions for upbuilding, is a character not of an
cient history but of permanent and modern claim.
It is an ideal that appeals to all one side of human
nature.

As felt by a deeply responsive soul like Kohe-
leth's, the sum total of impression coming on the

Hebrew mind from its Mosaic era re-

T ., 1P . , f. The world's

solves itself into a pervading sense of unspoken

sense of

pressure from above. He is here in the pressure

from above.

world to be governed. The conscious
ness that a will not his own is drawing his lines
and prescribing his lot for him has so got into his

96 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

nerves and blood that it is perhaps only at rare
seasons, or when he is a rare nature, that he feels
the burden of it ; it takes a Koheleth to realize and
describe

" the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world."

Nor has even he reached the point where he can
conceive an alternative. It has become the su
preme and for him the final order of things. It is
as if his universe were made and fitted down upon
him like a strait- jacket, and as if in his prison-
house existence it were really an immaterial ques
tion whether the man achieved a self -moved indi
vidual character or not.

To this prevailing life consciousness all the

lines of the Hebrew sage's history have inexo

rably converged. The Mosaic legalism,

brew his- to besin and culminate with, has from

tory has

a flexible and friendly code passed into

this sense. ^ hands of scribes and priests who
are so plotting to bring under its sway all the
operations of life, neutral as well as moral, that
the time is getting ripe for a Sadducaic protest.
Centuries of exile and dispersion and foreign
domination, under a succession of arbitrary and
unsympathetic rulers, have contributed to make
the feeling of bondage inveterate. And finally,
the awakening of Koheleth's scientific insight

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 97

from the Hebrew to the cosmic sense reveals in a
vaster purview what the soul may expect as soon
as it emerges into the larger world. It is the same
old condition, on whatever scale, — " cabin'd,
cribb'd, confined.'* Law Mosaic for the soul, law
despotic for the state, law cosmic for the world
of nature, all agree in one ; it is the apotheosis of
legalism, a dead pressure from above and without,
an alien power and will imposing upon man a life
which in its final analysis reduces to a task-work
round of unchosen duty and labor.

Here exist, in potency, all the excuses that men
have for losing their grip and going under. Here
at best is an environment which affords
support for hardly more than a nerveless
passive existence, treading its appointed aU?
round because it must, but with no answering
throb of loyalty accepting its lot. Yet here too,
rightly apprehended, is an arena of opportunity,
from which may come a character the sturdier
for the untoward conditions overcome, a character
which in itself is an unconscious prophecy of a
greater manhood era. How, then, shall Koheleth's
body of counsel conform itself to the situation, and
point out the way that a sane wisdom dictates ?
What, in other words, are the fundamental lines
of the character that he has at heart for man ?

Well, as regards its determining attitude, there

98 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

is in it, to a degree, the same note of reaction
that we have seen in his encounter with his time ;

but it is a reaction whose thrust is quite
1. Its deter
mining atti- other. Instead of being made up as a
tilde toward

its universe, remonstrance against its environment
of speculative fallacy, it is tempered to that calm
counterpoise which inheres in a soul that in un
toward conditions stands erect, unsubdued, strong
in its resources of wisdom and knowledge and
joy, sufficient to itself. " Having done all, to
stand," is the phrase in which St. Paul expresses
it ; neither to flee nor staying to be unmanned.
It requires some reaction, in the face of an iron
universe and an unrevealed outlook, to do this ;
so much at least — that action and reaction are
equal.

This is not rebellion ; it is not lack of humility.

Nor is this attitude taken in mere blind proud

Stoicism. To make up the conception

itseiilnto of it, Koheleth has gone the whole round

acceptance of creation and spoken as he saw. By
of the con- . , . .

ditions of defining his position, cosmic and spirit
ual, he has risen above it, to the van
tage-point where it lies before him in light and
control. His very tears and pity are the protest
of a spirit that will not let the pressure from
above crush him. Underneath the weight his wise
self-reliant soul is asserting itself, yet not evading

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 99

one whit ; is finding if not a way out, yet a way
to bear it in joy. In a word, what Koheleth has
at heart is a character which, when all elements
of being are reckoned, accepts the universe.1 It
must by the conditions of the case be a character
of endurance, whether of positive achievement or
not, a character acted upon, but to this extrinsic
pressure opposing, not in insubordination but in
courage and tempered cheer, an inner reactive
spirit which meets it on equal ground. And so
from futile quests in life and from self-pleasing
dreams of the future the soul is gently yet steadily
forced inward upon itself, upon the potential
wealth of being that inheres in its own movement
and choice. In spite of his hard environment, the

1 "At bottom the whole concern of both morality and reli
gion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do
we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and alto
gether ? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radi
cal and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there
are ways of living that must lead to good ? If we accept the
whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission, — ... or
shall we do so with enthusiastic assent ? Morality pure and
simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so
far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey with the
heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke.
But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifesta
tions, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull
submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which
may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and
enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place." — James, Varieties
of Religious Experience, page 41.

100 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

man may be strong enough to stand under the
world's weight, resourceful enough to erect the
kingdom of his own mind, wise enough, accepting
his universe as it is, to coin from his individual con
tact with life his own personal and individual joy.
Such an attitude as this creates its own idiom,
the idiom of the secular as distinguished from the
devotional, of the free and self -initiative
ing idiom of as distinguished from the prescriptive.

expression -n t

It does not employ the well-seasoned
religious vocabulary, but neither does it reject
it. It does not hold over man the legal terrors
of penalty, nor does it shape all conduct with ref
erence to Saturday-night wages. It does not, as
suming that the heart is depraved, go on to treat
that depravity as if it were an organic disease.
Rather, its counsels conform themselves homo
geneously to what in the commentary I have
called the intrinsic man, the man who can take

a sound and sufficient manhood for

Survey

v. 33. granted. " God made man upright,

and while it is portentously true that " they have

sought out many devices," yet it is not assumed

that these have twisted his nature permanently

out of shape. The fact that " there is

" not a righteous man on earth who doeth

good and sinneth not," is indeed not ignored ; but

instead of being used as something to be " lived

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 101

up to," like the old Calvinist's doctrine of total
depravity, it is laid into the personal scale to bal
ance our too harsh judgments of others. There is
a sound intrinsic manhood at the centre of things,
for which rules and counsels may be made ; the
very fact that, when the evil day comes Survey
to offset the good, man can be thrown l
back on himself without reference to the future
enlightening, is evidence of this. Here where the
pressure converges dwells an authentic human
soul, with a world and a potential autonomy of
its own ; not therefore at the mercy, or the ca
price, of crooked fate.

As one more fundamental element, there must
for this intrinsic man be recognized an all-men's
point of contact with life, not esoteric 3 Its polnt
nor one-sided, at which a wise inter- jScTwiui
preter like Koheleth can lay hold of
the central strand of manhood and weave it into
a tissue of comely character. Where shall this
point be found ? Not in the Temple ; not among
those learned scribes to whom the people that
know not the law are cursed; not in the stratum
of the wealthy and distinguished. All these re
present some side of life to which access is by
some privilege of birth or occasion or special en
dowment. Upon all these the universal pressure
has been in some aspect mitigated. But under-

102 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

neath them all is a stratum of obligation to which
every man is more or less bound, and it is upon
this stratum that Koheleth takes his stand. That
is the field of work, of labor. Labor is the nat
ural obverse of a regime of law, the ordained
portion of the man whose life is on the under side
of authority. This means virtually every man.
Labor comes so near being the universal lot, and
indeed so opens the channels of all that is inte
gral and individual in man, while on the other
hand man is so undone without it, that any com
prehensive counsel of character must reckon with
it as a normal milieu. Man's hardships are suf
fered, man's worth proved, man's rewards won,
in the all-encompassing sphere of labor. The rou
tine of the world's ongoings, the dubious question
of recompense, the grip of poverty and rivalry
and oppression, the projects that turn out to be
a " chase after wind," all draw together to one
focus, where, at the beginning and foundation of
a world's activities, is the man who is bowing to
the commands and doing the work.

And in Koheleth has risen the interpreter for
the era. His counsels, circling round

Koheleth 's .-• « .*,

wisdom and tne root oi the matter, are none the
the interpre- less vital for coming" on his heedless acre

tationofit. ...

like the remonstrances of a reactionary
and old fogy. They will spur and rankle until

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 103

they have gained their hearing. For, first, he is
endowed with that scientific poise of wisdom to
strike for the essential point where man ails and
whereon he can build. It is to the field of toil,
the world-welter of activity, that he di-

Proom, 3.

rects his first inquiry : " What profit
hath man in all his labor, which he laboreth
under the sun? " It is in happy, hearty work that
he sees the solid offset to the enigmas Snrvey
of a crooked world : " Behold, what I 11L 117<
have seen ! good that is comely : to eat and to
drink and to see good in all his labor which he
laboreth under the sun, all the days of his life
which God hath given him." It is on Survey
work done with our might before the v' 161<
grave closes over us that he sets the stamp of his cul
minating counsel. — Secondly, he is endowed with
the more inner and friendly insight of sympathy.
We do not have to read far without being aware
that his " search and survey " of things is made
with an aching heart. His Weltanschauung, with
the baffling problems it reveals, has laid hold on
the tenderest strings of his being. The sympathy
and pity which we associate with the spirit of our
latest age had pioneer utterance in him. What
modern scientist at his experimenting Survey
could more bitterly say, " I revolved L 103<
this until it made my heart despair concerning all

104 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

the labor which I had labored under the sun " ? It
was indeed through tears that he could quarry out
of a hard universe such counsel as would enable
his brother-men to eat their bread in joy.

Here, then, is Koheleth's fraternal appeal, not
manufactured or academic but organic, to that
Koheleth's vas* manhood stratum where the pres-
sure of things is most vitally felt. " I

would think, too," says Stevenson, " of
that other war which is as old as mankind, and
is indeed the life of man ; the unsparing war,
the grinding slavery of competition ; the toil
of seventy years, dear-bought bread, precarious
honor, the perils and pitfalls, and the poor re
wards." It is into just this turbid life of the
great mass of humanity that his most poignant
feelings and still more helpfully his sane inter
pretations enter. He assumes indeed the role of a

king, " king over Israel in Jerusalem ; "
Survey 1. 1. ,

but this, except as the sympathetic

sage is in very truth a king of men, is a trans
parent literary device. What he feels, its burden
and its tone of thought, is the lot of the laborer ;
and while his heart aches over the weariness and
unpaid drudgery of it, he longs also, from his
superior insight, to show what a compensation and
glory may inhere in it. His typical man is the
man who has a work to do ; his ideal portion the

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 105

worker's portion. His book is the one which, be
yond any other book of scripture, we may value
as distinctively the workingman's book.

II

Of this essential grounding of character we look
first to see the effect it was adapted to pro-
duce in its own land and era ; what kind
of a Jew, two centuries before Christ,
could be built and furnished upon it.

In a character so grounded we are not to look
for the qualities that make the greatest noise in
the world. The fact that it has its root The com_
in endurance, and is consciously acted JSassesCand
upon, makes rather for those unobtru- 25?{et£!
sive traits which wear well, and which
can assimilate the large proportion of common
place with which man's e very-day life is weighted.
To find how it is adapted to the national heritage
and bent, therefore, we must needs go where
these virtues are staple. This takes us remote
from kings and capitals, priests and temples, to
the great rank and file who have to do the work
and shoulder the burdens. It takes us too among
the annals that, for literary effect, are proverbially
dull. We have the further disadvantage that Ko-
heleth's book comes to us out of a period so nearly
unhistoric that we can only guess at its landmarks

106 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

of date. There is little that is salient, and nothing
at all imposing or picturesque, to lay hold of.
The book, in fact, gives more to history than it
derives from it ; and indeed rightly read, it does
much to make the dimness of its era luminous.
But it gives not by use or recognition of identifia
ble events ; rather by what we may call its spir
itual idiom, — that large reverberation of things
inner and outer in which we overhear not only the
new utterance of an individual thinker, but the
ground tone of a people's thought.

The Book of Koheleth was written at a time,
probably of the later Greek domination, when
What Kohe- ^srae^'s 1°* as a tributary people was the
SSestotEe accePted an(l settled order of things.

There are in it no stirrings of rebellion ;
but neither are there stirrings of loyalty. So far as
politics is concerned, it simply accepts an inevitable
in which it has no share. Writing, in spite of his
Solomonic assumption, not at all as a king but as
a man of the people, and identified with the earn
ing class, Koheleth sees government only on the
Surve ill un(ler and for the most part seamy side.

He sees where the organized system of
tax-farming reaches its grin ding-point in extortion
Survey ill an^ oppression of the poor. He sees
5>84- the cynical iniquity of the courts and

exalted places ; and on the side of the oppressed

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 107

no appeal and no comforter. He sees, as if from
below, boy-kings feasting in the morning and
surrounded by the shallow favorites for the sake
of whom princes of noble blood are reduced to
servitude. The universal espionage of
which the air around him is full drives 46^?67; v!
him to prove wisdom by the words he
does not say; or if he must confront the ruler, to
be reticent, conciliatory, tactful. The general re
versal of social norms — merit ignored and folly
exalted, ostentation and wealth getting the honors
and the costly funerals, money the answer to
everything — has engendered in him the gurve ^
habit of looking round on the other side 86 ; v- 66<
of every fact, to see where the real values of life
are ; herein indeed lies the practical usefulness of
his inquiry.

All this is no more than we may expect from
the provincial administration of an Oriental des
potism; it is shameless corruption and
tyranny, which, however, cannot authen- characteris-

.. ., 11. i ^T t108 °* an

ticate itself by recorded events. We Oriental

despotism.

can only say, the book before us, in
its counsels of wisdom, has at heart that type of
character which will enable a man to endure the
misgovernment of a pre-Christian outlying pro
vince.

And indeed, Koheleth's type of man does so

108 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

much more than endure that in the solid good

sense of his character we can well af-

JMSt forcl to let the highly stationed fools

acter that lie j -, » . •, •

sets over and snowy tops go their own vulgar way
and be forgotten. He can learn first of
all, as he stands in self-respecting integrity before
Survey v. ^is ruler, to honor the office if he can-
45 ; VL 41. not respect the man ; can have the self-
control not to leave his place even for abuse and
injustice. Then there is the virtue, one may al
most say Koheleth's sovereign virtue, of silence,
with its feeding motive of discretion and tact.
The keeping to the safe side, the cultivation of
the non-indictable ingredients of conduct ; — this,
in Koheleth's conception of it, is by no means
cognate with trimming and opportunism. The
basis of wisely defined principle makes the polar
difference. For underneath it all Koheleth is
laying on his Jewish reader the conviction that
he, the workingman who orders his work in wis
dom, is the real sinew of the state and of society.
Even in humility and poverty he can respect
himself, can so live as to be proud of his sta
tion. " Nevertheless," says Koheleth in the face
of cruelest iniquity from the powers above him,
survey ill. " nevertheless, the profit of a land is
for all ; the king himself is subservient
to the field." This is of course a plea on the

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 109

laborer's part for justice and immunity; but it
is more, it is an expression of the laborer's pride
and glory in the indispensable calling wherein he
consciously holds the welfare of the monarch in
his hand. The uncomely part has discovered that
in an essential way it has the greater comeliness.
And that this proceeds from no craven or weak
ling spirit, that it represents a principle hewn out
of a manly conception of life, we have the whole
tissue of Koheleth's observation and counsel to
prove.

Thus the book's current of power, in its day
and land, is a unitary influence to make the integ
rity of intrinsic manhood prevail. That „

J What kind

charming parable of the poor wise man, u^J^Jl
saving the city by his unvalued wisdom, aoter makes<
is in the same vein and appraisal. " And I said,
Better is wisdom than might, though the Survey
wisdom of the poor man is despised, v1-23-
and his words are not regarded." What differ
ence, after all, does the recognition make ? — to
be the man is the thing, is its own reward. Thus
it is that Koheleth works out his programme of
life for the man whose fully acknowledged lot it
is to be on the under side of things. The heedless
rulers of Palestine little thought what a sterling
body of subjects Koheleth's counsels were shaping
for them. If the Jew could not be architrave or

110 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

tower of state, but only a sill or buried foundation
stone, let him at least, as an intelligent weight-
bearer, make for a stable body politic. To govern
is no business of his, either to dictate or meddle
with; and if he must accept the humbler busi
ness of being governed, it shall be without whining
or truckling, and with eyes open. And thus he
shall follow not only the line of least resistance
for himself, but of soundest avails for life.

The same strain of principle and character,
undemonstrative yet intrinsically healthy, comes
similarity of *° l*&kt whenever Koheleth approaches
%£$*$"** that side of life with which the Hebrew
character. genius is most naturally identified —
the religious. It might be called the wise man's
relation to a venerable state church and to a body
of prescriptive religious doctrine and custom.

Here we must clear away a superficial concep
tion. The name skeptic, which the thinking of
several generations has fastened upon

tion of his Koheleth, has doubtless led many with-

skeptical

andunemo- out further heed to class him with the

tlonal tone.

ungodly and the scoffers. Nothing could
be more mistaken. His skepticism, which of course
we may not deny, is directed not against what is
holy or religious or established, but against tend
encies which in the long run may dissipate the
vital substance of religion. It is the skepticism

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 111

which insists on the evidence of experience and
on a deeper grounding of things. Its fibre is rev
erence for the unalloyed, unglamoured truth. Still,
we must concede, his book is pitched in a mod
erate spiritual key, a distinctly unpietistic tone,
which may well perplex those superficial thinkers
to whom religion must be emotional and demon
strative to make its reality felt. It is very evident
that Koheleth does not like effusiveness. We re
call the contempt he shows for the vapid wordi
ness of his time ; not unlikely his reaction against
it is a trifle excessive. The religion to which his
temperament inclines, and which perhaps is the
natural efflux of his dimly lighted era, is a religion
of reticence and inwardness, a religion that shuns
to invade the soul's sanctuary with clatter of much
speaking. " Be not rash with thy mouth, Snrvey
and let not thy heart hasten to utter a lli< 62-
word before God ; for God is in heaven and thou
upon the earth ; therefore be thy words few."

Koheleth believes in God, and believes unre
servedly ; but a God who speaks through law and
an ordered cosmos is not very near, and

Applied to

need not be approached with multitude ^JiSSSj

of words; too remote to be compan-

ioned with, too all-wise to be wheedled.

Our life's business is with His works

and world ; we adjust ourselves to Him by adjust-

112 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

ing ourselves to them. There is a large area of
truth to which we render all the higher honor by
simply taking it for granted, while we save our
cares and our plans for something else. In that
area, for Koheleth, lie the basal truths of God
and future life, truths which are by no means
denied, or even made doubtful, by being laid
up in the unprofaned sanctuary where words are
petty and weak ; nor are they less truly a mould
ing power in life for being translated into ungar-
rulous activity.

Herein we see the direct impulse to that cheer
ful, God-appointed, God-accepted work which closes

and crowns all Koheleth's vistas of life.
God^giveV0 The spirit of such work is the test of

the soul's axioms of being. Work so re
ceived and so done is the marriage of the seen and
the unseen, of the worldly and the religious ; it
is the means, too, by which, if by any, the vision of
the universe is focused from a bewildering phan
tasmagoria to a self-justifying order.1 " Where-
Survey ^ore ^ saw *ka^ • • • m&n should rejoice

in his own works ; for that is his por
tion." By a similar recourse, it will be remem-

1 " All things become clear to me by work more than by any
thing else. Any kind of drudgery will help one out of the most
uncommon either sentimental or speculative perplexity ; the atti
tude of work is the only one in which one can see things pro
perly." — Clough, Life and Letters, page 174.

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 113

bered, a modern successor of Koheleth, Arthur
Hugh Clough, endeavored to clear away from his
view of things the mists that clouded it : —

" It seems His newer will

We should not think at all of Him, but turn, Setters'
And of the world that He has given us make page 175.
What best we may ; " —

similar, except that Koheleth's transference of
care springs not from doubt and pain, but from
an unspeculative acceptance of the situation. If
God's laws of being have hidden His face, here
at least, close by, is man's work, with its creative
potencies and its interactions with life ; and what
ever dimness is in the world, whatever thwartings
of vanity, his portion it is to rejoice in this as a
stewardship from God. With this abiding con
sciousness, the very sense of God's unapproachable-
ness, which the age of legalism has so naturally
engendered, may make for a very sound and ster
ling fibre of character.

The same practical transmutation, as we have
already traced, vitalizes his relation to the vexed
problems of futurity. It is not the fact prom vague
of immortality that he calls in question, Jternltyin
but the defining and verifying of the
fact. Those occult things, he virtually says, are
things for which we have no present occasion.
As for the fact itself, we have enough to take

114 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

for granted, enough to build character upon. For
when, in his survey of " the toil which God hath
Survey it. given to the sons of men, to toil therein,"
he traces its elements of beauty and
timeliness, one component, he notes well, is the
fact that "also He hath put eternity in their
heart." Here, eminently, is a world fact which
does not gain by being tossed about in the limbo
of dialectics ; it is most honored by being laid up
among those living truths which work unseen to
mould the issues of life. Man's true response is
to let the presupposition of it be an influence to
uplift and upbuild.

And that Koheleth so treats this strain of eter
nity is evinced by the whole trend and body of his
HOW life is counsel. Especially notable it is that
wiufrSer- while he is ready, nay even labors, to
portray death in all its blank mysteri-
ousness, he always depicts his ideals of action on
a background not of impending dissolution but
of life, as if life were the only tenable presupposi-
survey vii. ^on °^ *nmgs- His descriptions of senil
ity and death are made expressly, it
would seem, in order that men may not make up
Namely in ^e ^h reference to them. His most
140™ 55'; jubilant and comprehensive programme
pages? of conduct comes just after his most
unrelieved depiction of doom; but not

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 115

until he has erected between the passages an ade
quate bridge to life: " For who is he that is bound
up with all the living ? — to him there Survey Ve
is hope ; for the living dog is better 128<
than the dead lion." It is not decrepitude, nor
death, nor mystic search for the unseen,1 which
gives the courage or the motive ; it is rather the
valued fullness, the unimpaired function, of life
itself. The life that now is, on this solid earth, is
the arena where the problem of living, with its
inhering religious sanctions, must be wrought to
solution. This truth stands fast, whatever we
ignore or take for granted.

As to the forms of religion, the Jew of Kohe-
leth's time had his established church, ancient and
sacred, to which he belonged by birth ; The Jew ^
and with its service of song and sacrifice mWormsoi
going on every day, as it were a process
of nature, he could treat it as something with
which his participation, nay, even his presence or
absence, had very little to do. Koheleth's one re-

1 " As to mysticism, to go along with it even counter to fact
and to reason may sometimes be tempting", though to do so would
take me right away off the terra firma of practicable duty and
business into the limbo of unrevealed things, the forbidden terra
incognita of vague hopes and hypothetical aspirations. But
when I lose my legs, I lose my head ; I am seized with spiritual
vertigo and meagrims unutterable." — Clough, Life and Letters,
page 175.

116 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

ference to the Temple service seems to assume that
the worshiper had the conventionalized conscious-
Survey ill. ness not unnaturally engendered by such
68< a state of things. Having employed a

priestly class to put his worship into form, and
having given them the building and the tools, the
Jew was apparently content to foot the bill and
be a spectator. For such a man the counsel is not
superfluous that he " keep his foot " when he goes
to the house of God, and manifest the reverence
due the service by drawing nigh to hear instead
of getting off into the Temple courts to loiter and
gossip. It is in connection with this mention of
the Temple worship, we will remember, that Kohe-
leth gives expression to his irritation at the wordi
ness of his time. The " fools' sacrifice " which he
censures as the worse alternative seems to be merely
the bringing to God's house of words instead of
homage, clatter of talk instead of a hushed and
listening heart. And all is just his plea to accord
to the established ritual, whether one's heart is in
it or not, the deference of a plain sincerity. If
the religious functions are so distributed that your
part consists only in hearing, then by all means
be a good hearer.

The same sincerity, as it were religion on straight
business principles, comes in to regulate the mat
ter of vows ; the value of which lies not in the

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 117

promise by which one advertises his cheap devout-
ness, but in the payment by which he stands to his
word, making it as good when there is
no compulsion exerted or honor gained, his voiun

r tarv vow

tary vows.

as when he can advantage himself. This survey uii
leads us back, in the most searching of
tests, to Koheleth's underlying conception of the
intrinsic man. In the rigidly prescribed Jewish
ritual the custom of vows would seem to have
been the one feature that rested entirely on the
devotee's free will. It was not commanded; its
infraction was not punished. From impulse to
completed act, from promise to payment, he was
wholly a law to himself, doing presumably just as
his sincere st heart prompted. His attitude toward
it therefore represented accurately what he was.
He could act his own nature, false or true. He
could play fast and loose with the institution,
and get as immediate reward a cheap repute for
sanctity and generosity ; or he could make it the
spontaneous outflow of a spirit of truth and sac
rifice which is its own reason for being. What
Koheleth's pronouncement shall be is not left
ambiguous; its bald peremptoriness reveals an
animus akin to indignation. " Better Survey U1<
that thou vow not," he says, " than that 71> 7c
thou vow and pay not. ... He hath no pleasure
in fools." The intrinsic man must prove that his

118 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

native fibre is sound, that he can be intrusted
with his own noblest bent and will. This is the
clear ray of common sense which Koheleth in
jects into the fog of words and casuistry which, it
seems, had invaded the church of his day. And
the plain end to which his counsel points, when
the soul has got its orientation amid the " dreams
and vanities and words many " which are sophis
ticating the issues of life, is just the beginning of
all sound wisdom, the wholesome fear of God.

We have tried to get an image of Koheleth's

typical Jew, as evolved from a wise response to

that dominion of subiection which has

All this but . J

the ideal- nad its free course with him in church
izing of

Jewish1*1 an(* state* The %ure is, however, no
character. mere creation of theory or counsel. In
the main elements of his character we have but to
fall back on history for illustration.

When the Words of Koheleth were written, the
Jew had received the historic moulding and stamp

by which he is known to the a^es since,
How Kobe- J

reveaisttie anc^ *° ^e present day. Between the
narySifeand ^nes °^ Koheleth's counsel we discern
of history. a gide of the Hebrew character which

otherwise we might easily miss ; and yet it is the
side from which we may best identify it with what
we know. The Jew as prophet we find in the
desert, or in the lonely grandeur of divine enthu-

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 119

siasm. The Jew as priest, the Jew as psalmist, we
find in the Temple^ absorbed in adoration and
prayer. Echoes of these traits, surviving, make
up the staple of his scripture and religion ; and
we take them as a full expression of him, as if the
Jew were always in prayer or sacrifice or devout
ecstasy. But how do we connect these with the
Jew whom we meet to-day ; and meanwhile, where
was the Jew of the people, of the rank and file?
The book before us, beyond any other Old Testa
ment book, puts us on the track of him. He had
his commercial and industrial interests, which had
become so much his life's idiom that Koheleth
must needs describe his evaluation of life in mer
cantile terms, terms of profit and loss. He had
his law and his church so mingled that life and
religion were interwoven in one tissue. He had
a mind so cultured in Mosaic integrity, so truly
a kingdom in itself, that whether in despotism or
dispersion, he had the resource to find a modus
vivendi, in inner adjustment to conditions hard
or easy, an intrinsic fund of character not at the
mercy of environment, and endowed according to
God's plan with wisdom and knowledge and joy.

All this is a refined expression of the alert, level
headed, business spirit. It uses the facts of life as
it finds them, and translates them from the eccle
siastical dialect into terms of practical energy and

120 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

enterprise. But all this reads, too, when we think

of it, like a protocol of the permanent Hebrew

type of character, modern as well as

The Jew of . T, ,. „ .,

to-day as of ancient, it gives us a glimpse of the
real son of Jacob-Israel, uncinctured and
unmitred, as he accommodated himself to a time
of alien domination, and became a sterling sub
ject, and minded his own business, gaining his
livelihood in the field and the market, in the
places of industry and traffic. And we find in him
the Jew of the centuries and of to-day. By fol
lowing an ideal not unlike this of Koheleth's, the
Jew in his perpetual exile among the nations has
everywhere forged his way to thrift and prosper
ity, as he suited his activities to conditions adverse
or friendly, and found in his livelihood the sup
port that was denied him from without. His train
ing in the long school of subjection has stood him
in good stead. He has learned his lesson well, and
the lesson has capabilities.

Ill

But though loyally Hebrew in spirit, Koheleth

is not concerned with buttressing or
Koheleth's . .

ideal of beautifying Judaism, as such. His sci-

character J

Soneetatsh entific sense of things has liberalized his
universal, vision. As he has learned to read in the
universe a cosmic order, so he has come to move

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 121

among men, and to give them counsel, as a citizen
of the world. Leaving the provincial machinery
of Mosaism and rabbinism unmentioned, leav
ing wholly unused the parish conceptions of sin
and cleansing, ecclesiasticism and religious forms,
he is striking out for a character which shall
coordinate with a larger realm of thought and
action, a character available for man as man,
unbondaged by era or environment. One limita
tion only it must needs acknowledge, the lim
itation of the pressure from above, cosmic and
spiritual, in subjection to which its lines of life
are shaped, whether the law of the spirit of life is
in it or not. In a word, Koheleth has at heart
the character of the perennial Old Dispensation,
as it fills and rounds out its type.

The man on the under side of things, — Kohe
leth is the true comrade and counselor for him.
We know the man from daily observa- Koheleth,s
tion. He is childish and petulant, per- *0rr°fJ^
haps, or havd and intractable. If he has °^eot^el
spirit, that spirit resolves itself into a t
quarrel with the universe ; if not, he becomes a
listless quarry-slave, hopeless of better things. To
make the turning of the worm somehow effective,
he organizes unions, or oftener accepts the organ
izations ready made, content to be a passive bolt
or pinion in the machine as he imagines dimly

122 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

that the motive power or purpose of the union has
to do with some vague redress. His walking dele
gate is accepted as the brain and messiah of his
class. If his imagination were large enough to
identify a sage who can see all, or a Christ who
loves all, with his interest ; if he could see such a
man as one who would grind his axe or turn his
mill, he would choose him as his walking delegate
and would take the oath of his union. But he
stints his imagination. It stops with his day's
work, with his mine or his loom. He sees nothing
large beyond. To him the end and culmination of
things is Saturday night with its pay envelope.
He does not look up through his lot or through
his world, does not comprehend or explain the
superincumbent pressure. Koheleth does. Kohe-
leth has looked into things until he has acquired
a cosmic consciousness, and this has changed his
appreciations. If there is crookedness and oppres
sion, marvel not at the matter. He sees an order,
and a place for each man, just fitted for him if he
will make it such. This leads to a body of counsel
recognizing things as they are, and a content
ment to correspond. Instead of a quarrel with the
universe, acceptance of it. Instead of a listless
enslaved spirit, calm reaction of equality and com
prehension ; man as great as his universe. This
is the key of the situation ; all comes out of this.

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 123

Thus far our study of Koheleth's counsels has
revealed a character sterling, resourceful, self -re
specting, tactful ; but also, it must be

Its lack of
confessed, distinctly pedestrian. It has the heroic

J * n , . element.

no wings, does not rise to the dashing

or heroic, is always self-contained, with a prudent
eye to the bearings and consequences of things.
Perhaps it had to be so, in the heavy atmosphere of
its era ; perhaps its idiom of endurance, ingrained
in a long-subjected nation, made the shrinkage
necessary. And yet all this seems to leave a side
of human nature scantily provided for ; that side
from which open the generous gateways of head
long, adventurous, self -forgetting action, — surely
an element of life that no era or scheme of man
hood can afford to ignore. Such unrelieved goody-
ness would have, we may be sure, little

J The late

appeal to that man of our own time who

" would never suffer you to think that
you were living, if there were not, some- page 166g
where in your life, some touch of heroism, to do
or to endure." Nor is it this, but something quite
other, and something equally distinct from its
audacious tone, which has made Koheleth's book
the favorite of unconformed souls. If they have
responded to its independent spirit, they have not
missed finding in it something strong and meaty
too.

124 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

We come here close upon the great organic lack
in Koheleth's assessment of life ; a lack whose ex
istence has been repeatedly intimated,
organic lack and a particularization of which is due

ol the book , - , , ., , .„ .

has left later. Meanwhile, let us see if in the
some chance ,.•.•• . . »

sa£o?P6n" undemable tonic quality of his thought
there is not connoted some element of
character to fill the gap, something to make the
stress and struggle of a depressing era not only
sustaining but masterful and buoyant. There must
surely be discoverable in every period, however
dim and tyrannous, some stairway to faith and

joy-
it may be questioned whether character can im
press men as truly heroic, in the large sweep of

that term, until its main thrust has got
Thehandi- . . °

cap oi Kohe- beyond the merely reactionary ; until,
leth's reac- J ? .

tionary emancipated ironi its exacting emergen
cies, it can strike out unconditioned for
itself. Before that time its energy must be largely
used up in indignation, or in the narrow defining
of issues. This was Koheleth's handicap. In the
first great historic conflict between Hebraism and
Hellenism, his it was, in the sanity of his cosmic
insight, to stand in the breach, fighting back the
wave of vain speculation which was threatening to
sweep the Jewish soul away from its ancient moor
ings. It was indeed the encounter of Zion with

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 125

Greece.1 But in his peculiar tactics and temper
the issue was joined rather by flank than by centre ;
it was the battle of what was organic and perma
nent in Hebraism against what in Hellenism was
ephemeral and fallacious. A thankless task it was,
therefore, on Koheleth's part, and little under
stood ; the heroic strain of it on so large a scale
that to valet minds it might not appear at all. Nor
could Koheleth's purposed victory, though ever
so decisive, be so much a triumph as a necessary
check and corrective. He was compelling a new
influence of the age, in some aspects good, perhaps,
but still exotic, to present its passport ; but just
because of this strange issue, he was freer to let in
the foe, so far as the invasion could be welcomed
as a broadening. This is what, to a degree, comes
about from his dealings with the Hellenizing tend
encies of his century.

The Greek spirit, after all, is no monopoly of
a nation. It has primal and native rights in life.
The soul is impoverished without it. Pure He-

1 This great world-battle, which was bound to come some
time, seems to be rather vaguely recognized in the passage,
Zechariah ix. 12, 13, from which this phrase is taken : " Turn you
to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope : even to-day do I declare
that I will render double unto thee ; when I have bent Judah
for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O
Zion, against thy sons, 0 Greece, and made thee as the sword
of a mighty man."

126 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

braism, with its uncompromising insistence on law
and obligation, and without some more genial
what good spiru^ t° WOI>k with it, limbering up life
and making it more flexible and liberal,
'ls an iron regime, unthankful and un
lovely. No wonder the dull routine of
it set Koheleth crying, " Vanity of vanities, what
profit ? " No wonder the Jew of the night of legal-
ism hailed an influence that promised relief. When
the Greek invaded Palestine, he came bearing gifts
of value, if only the sage could be found who would
appropriate them wisely and separate dross from
ore. And this, I think, is the service of Koheleth's
wisdom and courage to his generation. He is
stanchly Hebrew ; and yet when he has dealt with
the situation, somehow it is no longer unrelieved
Hebraism. It has taken on elements of beauty
and grace. He has found the point of contact
where the Hellenic spirit may be applied, frankly
survey vii. and confidently, to life. Like the Greek,
i, 2 ; v. 143. he Deiieves in joy and sunshine. He will
eat and drink with merry heart ; he will at every
season have his garments white and oil on his
Survey head not lacking ; he will cast himself,
in the abounding spirit of youth, upon a
large and uncircumscribed existence. But unlike
the Greek, and far nearer the core of being, he
will make sure of something solid to rejoice in, and

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 127

keep the windows of the spirit open, and in every
pleasure be sure that his heart is guiding in wis
dom, and remember that this is a world not only
of joy but of judgment. His steady pull at the
ascetic rein, which of course we cannot deny, is no
kill-joy menace ; it resolves itself into a plea for
a tempered energy, a wise foresight, that the soul
may build herself more stately mansions. It does
not contemplate a less interesting and zestful plane
of being, but rather interest in more worthy and
substantial things, things that, because they are
interwoven with man's livelihood and ordained
portion, may redeem the most prosaic no less than
the most favored existence. The kingly soul is writ
ing for the laborer ; and his counsel is in effect a
plea for advance along the whole line of life, to an
inner world where with the joy of its eating and
drinking there is left no Damocles threat, no ser
pent of vanity and disillusion to bite the heels.

Thus, whether aware how much he is doing or
not, Koheleth is responding to what is wholesome
in the genial promise of his time ; is go- An autlien
ing forth, as it were, to meet the Greek
spirit halfway, and lead it hospitably
into the ordered steadiness of the He- of me>
brew house ; admitting a liberalized spirit to alli
ance with a more sound and sacred letter. Not all
reactionary, then, he is concerned rather to revise

128 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

and deepen the treaty which his age is so allured
to make. And when thus the Hebrew strain strikes
hands with the Greek, life need not be a plodding
pedestrian thing ; there are well-grounded re
sources to give it zest and joy, heroism and endur
ance, even in the midst of its tasking round.

IV

This resolving of exotic influences was, however,
only an incidental part of Koheleth's contribution
Koheieth's *° ^ie WOI>k °f Wisdom. The part that
SmracterCal ploughed most deeply into manhood

doSffrom character was his dealing with the He-
withinthe , ., ,. -, . ., £ .,, .

Hebrew brew situation and spirit irom within.

See a e Standing, as we have noted, at the point
is, above. ^Q wh[Gh an the influences of the matured
Mosaic dispensation converge, he shows the very
age and body of the time its form and pressure ;

this is his work in Wisdom. " One of
Biblical and . „ ,, , , „ ^

Literary the tasks of the old economy, says rro-

A. B. David- f essor Davidson, " was to drill holes in
son, page 71. . .

itself, to begin making breaches along

the whole circumference of the material wall that
bounded it — by the Law to die to the Law. And
none were busier agents in these operations than
the Wise." Nor of the Wise, we may add, were
there any more fearless and radical, and at the
same time more tenderly sympathetic, than Kohe-

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 129

leth. In that encompassing atmosphere of legalism
and universal subjection he moves with the assured
strength of a master, using its influences without
being used by them, drawing out of the time spir
itual powers and graces that avail for all time, as
he seeks " what is the good thing for the sons of
men to do under the heavens all the days of their
life."

By the law to die to the law, this is the spirit of
the sages' endeavor. We may name it a movement
toward emancipation. Let us trace the phases ^
phases and gradations of this, as Kohe- s™^0118-
leth's counsels shape out of it a growth of wisely
ordered character.

It begins with the manly poise which comes
from discounting the situation as it is ; the reac
tion, as I have called it, equal to the L The
pressure exerted upon it. The situa-
tion is grave enough, and Koheleth has

not spared words in setting it forth ;
without recalling details, we may sum it up in
what St. Paul pictures as " the creation Romans
subjected to vanity, not of its own will." vUL 20<
Once clearly recognized, how shall this alien will,
this universal subjection, be met ? Obviously there
are degrees in bondage. There are ways of shift
ing the burden to the other shoulder, or changing
position, or bringing into exercise another set of

130 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

muscles, which may do much to make an irksome
condition more bearable. In all these there may
lurk some spirit of insincerity ; some sour rebel
lion, or servility, or evasion, or time-serving. But
surely, too, there must be feasible some way of
large and noble living, the stronger for the pres
sure consciously encountered. Koheleth's type of
manhood proves its fibre here. It is a manhood
neither deprecatory nor disloyal, nursing at its
Survey v core neither slavishness nor cunning.
40-50. Before the powers that be, both seen
and unseen, Koheleth will have his man stand
Survey vi. erect and dignified ; leaving not his

place if the spirit of the ruler rises
against him ; marveling not at the crookedness of
Survey in ^he world ; keeping a cool head as to

the real issues of life ; not suffering him
self to be unhorsed either by the spectre of vanity
on the one side or by the witching vision of futurity
on the other. In the midst of it all he is to be a
world, a law, to himself, accepting his universe
and using it.

And the secret of it is, that the regime of law,
its good as well as its limitation, is fairly inter-
Motived fc Prete(l an(i measured. Koheleth has not
insigehtso?ed necessarily to throw away his dispensa-
wisdom. t-on Because he has come to see wherein
its potencies are exhausted. There is a nobler

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 131

way of dying to law, the way of law itself, whereby
the order of things, vital and cosmic, becomes in
grained in the functions of life. For the impulse
to obey is as real and normal as the impulse to
transgress; nay, in a spirit trained by wisdom to
identify law with reason, it is more so. Nor is
there less of the heroic and adventurous spirit in
loyally accepting the universe, baffling as it is felt
to be, than in supinely submitting to be crushed
by it, or in trying by some unmanly evasion to
crawl out from under its obligations. Vanity in
the world is best encountered by substance in the
heart.

Herein, I think, is Koheleth's fundamental
contribution to the theorem of living : to announce,
after all his excursions through the abys- How wlg_
mal deeps of the world, that wisdom, fe°sitSS0Ltt
identifiable with integral and law-abid- c
ing character, meets the situation better than any
thing else. " Wisdom giveth strength to the wise
man, more than ten chieftains that are SurveyVil;
in the city." " The refuge of wisdom is iv> 77<
as the refuge of money ; but the advantage of
knowledge is, that wisdom quickeneth its posses
sor." Hence it is that though Koheleth is frankly
skeptical, he is not infidel ; and his final counsel
to fear God and keep His commandments, so far
from reading, as the critics assert, like a correc-

132 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

tive tail added by some redactor to save the
book's orthodoxy, is the very crown of
his logic, the duty in which his unitary
concept of manhood is best summed up. All the
See survey great features of his thought he punc
tuates, so to say, with the fear of God ;
God's will, God's majesty, God's law, bowed to
in silent reverence, is the court of final appeal.
Survey v ^u* on ^e lower plane, too, obedience
40» 47m to authorized commands, from whatever
source they emanate, is in Koheleth's counsel the
safe and sane attitude of a life lived in our bounds
of circumstance. His relation to his being's law,

Matthew *n sum> *° au*nori*y expressed in what-
ui. 15. ever recognizable form, is a distinct
adumbration of the master spirit who later said,
" Suffer it to be so now ; for thus it becometh us
to fulfil all righteousness."

This attitude of loyal obedience, however, goes
only a little way toward making up Koheleth's

relation to his regime of law ; not far
The situa- m t '

tion shifted enough, indeed, to chime with the gen-

13161 eral tone of the book, which is by no

means so tame as this would connote. His spir
itual key is a tone higher, and in bolder instru
mentation. In fact, law as such, though its pre
sence is felt all the while, does not come up for
mention, any more than would breathing or diges-

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 133

tion in the bodily life. Adjustment to law is a
manhood function ; and there is an end of it. He
takes for granted, in other words, that human na
ture is in fair enough working order to respond to
the best counsels. But what shall the manhood
soul do if the regime itself is out of joint ? There
is the rub, the very core of Koheleth's assessment
of the world. Like Job before him,
though on another count, he has reached 19-24 ;

3 . . xxili. 3-7.

the point where he, a mortal man, is
large enough to criticise his universe ; he has got
a view of its seamy side. And his sweeping in
dictment of vanity goes deep. It is not that man
does not get pay for living ; not that his being's
law is unjust. He can get what he supremely
wants, but when it is secured to the full, it is an
inevitable disappointment, a misfit. It is his fate
to have before him an eternally unattained goal
of living. " All the labor of man is for Survey jv.
his mouth, yet is the soul not filled." 26<
All the rewards after which he strives — food,
wealth, honor, family — turn out always to be no
reward at all, to leave the work unpaid, the soul
hungry. Not in these, nor in any earthly thing,
is its fated satisfaction. Yet on earth if anywhere,
in this life if ever, must its blessedness Survey lv
be obtainable. " Though one live a 23i
thousand years twice told, and see not good, -

134 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

are not all going to one place ? " Here, then, is
the more deeply seen situation to which Koheleth's
attitude must be related : the soul of man too large
for its universe, yet seeing no way out.

The one resource available is the one that Ko-

heleth takes. " Heaven," as a poet says, " opens

inward." The soul is thrown back upon

oftheintrin- itself. For the good of life it is not at
sic soul. »

the mercy ot time and environment.

For the rewards of living it is above the standard
even of subservience to an externally imposed law.
It can take up its abode calmly, and find its joy,
before the most tyrannous enigma of fate. " Con
template the work of God ; for who can
83 ; of. also straighten what He hath made crooked ?
In the day of good be in good heart ;
and in the evil day consider : — this also hath
God made, over against that, to the end that man
should not find out anything after him." The
soul can command the situation, because its world,
its eternity, its treasure, is within.

' ' Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands ;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands ;
For man is man and master of his fate."

The cheery discounting of consequence, with
its accompanying consciousness of initiative, has
a notable reflex effect in Koheleth's counsels, on
his attitude toward his regime of subjection and

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 135

obedience. There is a way of treating the law of
life as if one were no longer an apprentice, learn
ing and practicing it as it were by
arbitrary rule and blundering, but a
virtuoso, a master-workman, in whose
procedure the rule is swallowed up in tlon<
skilled proficiency. Not only has the law of being
become so ingrained, so instinctive, that he has
become dead to it ; he has passed beyond it into
the realm of that self-moved individuality which
has been expressively called " the higher lawless
ness."1 Something like this is meant, I think,
in the much discussed precepts not to Surye iy
be too righteous nor too wicked, not 93'102-
to let your wisdom stick out too much, and not
to let your wickedness be a piece of stupidity.
Koheleth has explored wisdom and folly, has had
his apprenticeship in righteousness and wicked
ness, has traversed the domain of law and touched
bottom. The elements of character are to him a
keen-edged working-tool, the ready instrument of
his will and his spirit. He knows in himself just
what use to put them to, can employ them as it
were to make life a work of artistry. He has the
same attitude toward rules of life that the grizzled

1 Brierly, Problems of Living, page 257. " The passage of tho
conscious into the instinctive is ever the sign of advance." Ib.
page 281.

136 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

old general has toward rules of strategy, which
he can break all to pieces in order to gain his
victory, or that Beethoven has toward the canons
of his music art, which on his way to a supreme
achievement of genius he can royally discard, to
the dismay of the pedants. Koheleth, too, is large
enough to bowl the laws of righteousness about as
if they were things to be domesticated and domi
neered, rather than groveled under and dreaded ;
nor will he shun, in the interests of spiritual mas
tery, to make wise use of the darker elements of
Survey iv. being. " Jt is good tn^t thou lay hold on
this, and from that, too, refrain not thy
hand, for he that feareth God shall come forth of
them all." Here is struck a higher keynote than the
legalistic ; it is the individual, the spiritual, the
wisely self -directive, surging up into expression.
Law need not remain an awkward, mechanical,
alien thing ; it can be tempered and proportioned
into fine issues, into an artistic masterpiece of char
acter. And so, in the fear of God, it should be.

Thus a vein in Koheleth which has been super
ficially interpreted into a rakish lawlessness, or a
3 The still Par^n^ down of conduct into a " golden

pSwtoward mean>" ig seen when connected with its

SverlSwfoi motive principle to yield a much loftier

ter> ideal of character, an ideal which presses

hard to transcend the established standard of its

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 137

Mosaic dispensation. And that this is the true
significance of it is increasingly evident when we
coordinate with it Koheleth's profound dealings
with the problem of yithron, profit, which as we
have seen plays so large a part in his interrogation
of life. The great poverty of his dispen-

, , . i v . . Seepages

sation, so congealed in legalism, is its 34-36,
lack of overflow, surplusage, initiative,
freedom, self-moved individuality, in a word the
spirit of life ; — it takes many names to express
it all, because the large fact covers so many as
pects of an effete era, a dead centre, a nodal point
in manhood evolution. This lack distributes it
self into all the regions of being; its chilling
influence invades character too. And from the
way Koheleth's practical mind lays hold of it, and
weaves the corrective of it into conduct, we see
how in him the manhood spirit is awake, mewing
its mighty youth, reaching out dimly after larger
areas of being. So this, so far as one man's sturdy
counsels can reveal, is the auroral promise of a
new era. It infuses into the springs of action that
creative Trieb of human nature which Browning,
in one of its aspects, thus describes : —

" Man, — as befits the made, the inferior thing, —
Purposed, since made, to grow, not make in turn, anfl the *"
Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow, — Book, I.
Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain
The good beyond him, — which attempt is growth, —

138 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

Repeats God's process in man's due degree,

Attaining man's proportionate result, —

Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps.

Inalienable, the arch-prerogative

Which turns thought, act — conceives, expresses too !

No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free,

May so project his surplusage of soul

In search of body, so add self to self

By owning what lay ownerless before, —

So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms —

That, although nothing which had never life

Shall get life from him, be, not having been,

Yet, something dead may get to live again,

Something with too much life or not enough,

Which, either way imperfect, ended once :

An end whereat man's impulse intervenes,

Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive,

Completes the incomplete and saves the thing."

Browning has poetic creation in mind, and gives his
thought accordingly the more transcendental turn.
Koheleth, whose purview is no whit less spacious
or poetic, by applying his ideal to the pedestrian
domain of conduct, runs the risk of disguising its
depth, and shows a stolid carelessness of literary
charm. Nevertheless, the great background is there,
identical in principle with that of the poet and the
artist. The need of a surplusage of soul, a residuum
of manhood not inspired by reward, is making itself
felt. A true creative impulse is at work, laying
Survey i ^'ne foundation of a wisdom and character
-^n5* tS, « beyond the demand," crowd
ing the veins of a decrepit dispensation with a

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 139

fullness of life which at once glorifies it and surges
up to the very borders of a new spiritual era
wherein the expression of manhood is spontaneous
and self-directive.

How, then, is this surplusage of soul, this mak
ing of obedience more than obedience,
projected into the practical things of
life ? counsel-

One way we have seen : that lordly taking of
liberties with law which evinces not the spirit of
transgression or rebellion, nor of redu- Page 135>
cing conduct to a golden mean, so much a
as a spirit within, which by taking the wise charge
of life into its own hands reinforces and vitalizes
the letter. Its principle is the same as that of the
athlete, who trains more severely than he has occa
sion for in the contest ; or of the bridge-builder,
whose works are tested to much greater strain
than the utmost of actual usage will ever ap
proach. Another way, very marked throughout
the book, is seen in Koheleth's endeavor, as he goes
along, to secure from every experience Slirvey
its elements of wisdom and profit. " The *
surplus that giveth success," as he says of a homely
labor-saving device, " is wisdom." It is

as if, like our Lord after him, he were vi. 32-34;

xvii. 10.
going over the plain obligations of life

one by one and saying, " If you do it only for pay,

140 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

or as task-work, what thank have ye ? Ye are
ci. survey unprofitable servants." Especially note-
vi. 35-eo. worthy is the constant meliorism of his
counsel, his habit of balancing alternatives in
survey ill. or^er to inculcate the better course. In

a crooked world, for example, full of
injustice and oppression, wherein mere existence
suggests a choice between evils, he brings common
sense to the problem, and points out what, in so
ciety and solitude, in state and church, in worship
survey an(^ vows and general poise of mastery,
iv. 46-so. the wjger alternative is. Again, where
the man is brought to confront that crookedness
of fate which cannot be straightened, Koheleth
introduces a series of alternatives, miscellaneous
indeed, but having a common object of soul cul
ture and fortifying, to the end that, standing up
in intrinsic worth, the man may present a nobler
Survey front to the universe. That the soul may

lay the foundations of honor and beauty,
that the heart may become fair, that character
may grow in quiet sanity of wisdom, — objects

Survey tnese seem to be in Koheleth's mind

iv. 54, 58. jn praisjng the house of mourning and
the experience of sorrow and the day of death.
Survey Strange such hints of asceticism as
iv. 49, 47. these would appear, from one who has
found nothing better than to eat and drink and

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 141

rejoice in labor, until we realize that through it
all he is seeking to emancipate the soul from its
pressure of law and prescription by opening to it
a world wherein it may prove itself worthy to com
mand its own law of being. He is, in a word, so
training man in assured wisdom of character that
all unawares, perhaps, man is in the way to outgrow
his era.

One more adumbration of the larger impulse
of being, the natural comrade of what we have
described, must not fail of mention. As

4. The

Koheleth's body of counsel nears its taiuaistages
end, the tendency to transcend the pre
scriptive warrant becomes more marked, until we
note therein a disposition to venture on uncertain
ties, to embark on new enterprises, to bear weight
on native soundness, which is very like faith. St.
Paul, we will remember, looking back over the
progressive Old Testament era, says the Qalatians
Law was a schoolmaster to lead man m< 24<
up to the point where faith, not dead obligation,
should be the determining attitude of life. It is
natural to suppose that as this legal tutelage ap
proached the epoch of graduation, signs of the
adult life impulse would appear. And this is what
we trace in Koheleth's maturing coun- Snrvey
sel. The familiar passage about casting vil 9C
bread upon the waters, for instance, which has

142 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

been so misread as an inculcation of charity, is
rather a rudimental expression of the faith im
pulse ; containing as it does a spirit so expansive
and confident, as compared with the general spirit
Survey °^ *ne period, that we read it almost
as a New Testament precept. The coun
sel about sowing seed morning and evening, with
which the Sixth Survey terminates, and in a nega-
Survey ^ve wav *ne little group of maxims
about observing clouds and winds, and
about disregarding the evil chances that inhere in
survey every venture, are in the same vein. It
vi. 61-eo. jg ajj a Distinct incitement, direct or im
plied, to strike out, and take chances, and bear
weight on the promises of life. It is far above a
quarry-slave bondage ; it is more even than a loyal
obedience that we see here ; and yet there is in
it no tinge of reluctance or rebellion ; it is the
wreaking of surplus energies on life, a committal
to the unfulfilled promises of action, in a venture
of faith.

In the culminating points of the book it is,
however, that we feel most distinctly how true
The hei lit ^^ strong a pulsation of faith inspired
thilfaith Koheleth's body of thought. We feel it,
cumulates, j gav . for it comes to us rather by the

spirit than by the letter. Notable first in those
groups of essentially identical counsels, like succes-

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 143

sive and cumulative waves, to which the various
Surveys lead up. The eating and drinking which
are always brought into these counsels to accom
pany the joy in labor are the symbol not of reac
tive animalism nor of sour recklessness, but of
confidence, that confidence wherein, having found
his congenial element, man can dismiss care and
foreboding and let life as it were live itself. Nor
does it stop with faith in one's ordained por
tion. Most notable of all in this faith dialect
is the counsel with which the last Survey, and
so the whole book, culminates, that robust call to
young manhood which expresses nothing less than
faith in the fundamental soundness of human
nature.

" Rejoice, 0 young man, in thy youth,

And let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy young1 manhood ;
And walk thou in the ways of thy heart, Survey

And in the sight of thine eyes ; v^- 8 S(W-

And know that for all these God will bring thee into judgment ;
And remove sorrow from thy heart,
And put away evil from thy flesh ;
For youth and the morn of life are vanity. "

That this strikes an essentially new note, even in
the counsels of Wisdom, we may see from the re-
liectioii that none of Job's friends, those austere
croakers of total depravity, would ever have dared
to give a young man such rein. Koheleth puts his

144 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

stamp on this period of life as the most typical
and representative ; bids man, just while the blood
courses warm and red and the heart bounds high
in hope and courage, to let himself go, as it were,
and be a man in wisdom ; bids him remember his
Creator then, as the Creator of the full and free
manhood life, then, before the days of senility and
disillusion come. The safe years of life, after all,
are the years of the enthusiasms and enterprises,
the years wherein the healthy young manhood soul
eliminates its sorrows and poisons and looks for
the verdict of judgment ; the dangerous years are
the years when the vital powers are going the other
way, when pleasures pall, when clouds return after
rain, when the blanch of disillusion is on every
thing. In those dangerous years it is, not in as
cending and growing years, that the strong asset of
life, the stay and refuge already confirmed, should
be mindfulness of the Creator. This is the genuine
idiom of faith ; it is committed to a vision, we may
almost say, of the Son of man; only the Christ
toward which it is dimly leading expresses Himself
in terms of the universal man, the Christ, so to say,
who begins His leadership by smiting His whole
some spirit into the livelihood of the carpenter and
Galilean. Have faith in your essential manhood ;
when Koheleth can rise to this height of counsel,
he is not far from the fullness of the times.

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 145

V

Yet with all this, tonic and noble as it is, we
feel a nameless lack, like a lost chord in the music,
a something striving to reveal itself as

. , , Yet some-

it were by an argumentum e silentio. thing lack-
After all that a reactive and reinforcing the 'test is
vigor can rescue from a universe of law,
the fact of vanity remains as palpable as ever ;
and the book, one of the bravest books
in the world, is one of the saddest.
Some motive more triumphant still is needed to
deal with the intractable enigma of being. What
this is, Koheleth himself knows as little as do his
contemporaries ; he knows only, in his sense of
the dearth of surplusage, that there is somehow a
lack in the order of things. Yet his sympathy and
heartache, his yearning to help man in his ill-paid
labor, are an eloquent witness to it. He has learned
to be kindly with his kind. But he has not learned
that this very kindliness, so far from being a mo
nopoly of his own, springs from that deep motive
of existence which is the very key and completion
to it all. It is struggling there blindly, in his own
heart, almost ready to announce itself ; but his up-
look from below, his sense of pressure from God
and the world above, so hems his view that he can
not bring it out strong into the working vocabu
lary of humanity.

146 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

We, however, are in more favorable case. Look

ing back from our sunlit region, and giving freer

play to the promptings of the spirit, we

supreme have been made aware that what is lack-
lack of

mg is an essential reversal of spiritual

tationis. impulse; the outward current we may
call it; that supreme overflow of being which
merges self-interests in larger issues. The motive
of love, — of comradeship and sacrifice, of help
fulness and sympathy, of favor and chivalrous
magnanimity, that free impulse of action, which
does not think of subjection to law at all because,
as love of God and neighbor, law is doing its per
fect work as if it were an instinct, — this is sadly,
conspicuously absent. We look for the throb of
it in Koheleth's counsels, and while there are signs
that it is stirring blindly in the underworld of the
eternal human, it has not become conscious of its
meaning and value, has not learned to wreak itself
on its universe and teach men so. Instead of it
every utterance, from beginning to end, is a more
or less refined expression of regard for the main
chance ; its current is self ward. How to stand
up under the pressure and be a man, integral and
intrinsic, this is his main problem; but he has
not yet reached that grace-inspired consciousness
of being wherein the pressure is removed alto
gether. Whatever vital virtue both Hebraism and

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 147

Hellenism can yield he has laid hold of and trans
muted nobly into character : has as a stanch son
of Mosaism brought a fine Stoic fortitude to his
acceptance of the universe, and with Epicurean
cheer no less real has rejoiced in the portion
wherein he can eat and drink and make his home.
Yet the pressure remains ; and his attitude toward
it has hardly risen above that of a servant, albeit
a servant faithful and wise, doing well what it is
in his stewardship to do. The later stage of spirit
ual development, still closed to him with all his
era, will admit him, conscious partner with God,
into the secrets of His presence and spirit, no more
servant but friend.

VI

In getting at the involvements and relations of
Koheleth's thought, we have been obliged to fetch
so wide a compass that there is need,
perhaps, by way of summary, to detach

its central and distinguishing elements
and exhibit them in more compendious mass to
gether. Let us, then, as the final section of this
chapter, inquire what place these concepts of the
world and of character give Koheleth in the large
map of life.

In this felicitous phrase of the historian Lecky
we may characterize the work of the succession

148 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

of Wisdom writers, Koheleth with the rest, who
traced their literary paternity to Solomon. They
The Hebrew were endeavoring, eac^ according to his
an(l sense of occasion, to construct
maP °^ ^Q- This map, according
to the fundamental spirit of Wisdom,
they laid out on the practical projection ; not as
designed or dictated from a mount of revelation,
but as the exploration and discovery of sound
sense and experience. As this experience became
more differentiated and refined, and as the inner
history of the nation contributed its share, the
various tracts and bounds of the map were more
accurately determined ; the Wisdom becoming, if
less absolute and sweeping in its conclusions, more
close-fitting and vital. Such is in outline the de
velopment of the Hebrew Wisdom, or philosophy,
through those leading books which remain to us
as its chief monuments.

As it came to men in its first broad discoveries,
represented in the large by the Book of Proverbs,
and in compendium by the friends of
tissue oi Job, Wisdom was concerned mainly with
inPth6e Book establishing a great central truth which
of Proverbs. we mav call t^Q Newtonian law of the

whole system : namely, that righteousness in the
fear of God, which the law and the prophets already
enforce as vital religion, is also the essence of wis-

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 149

dom, a workable principle for the guidance of life ;
and conversely, that he who scorns God and fol
lows his own base nature or lawless will is not only
a sinner but a fool,— is taking the way of mad
ness and failure. This axiom of the philosophy of
life, identifying the truth of the work-day with the
truth of the sanctuary, takes its place in the sages'
counsels as something that cannot be shaken. How
ever bewildered the soul of Job maybe, Joljxxvii.6;
he always keeps fast hold on this, as the
sheet anchor of his integrity. However sweeping
Koheleth's criticism of things, he never calls this
in question ; a main object of his, indeed, is to
verify it. Along with this law, in the early Wis
dom, went also its sanction and sequel : namely,
that wisdom gets the rewards of life, its wealth,
its comforts, its honors, its length of days ; and
conversely, that the sinner, the fool, comes to disas
ter and destruction. Here was a plain philosophy,
on which in general man might depend ; expansive
too, and flexible, as life's rewards and retributions
were interpreted as more inner and spiritual. Life
built on this principle is well built.

But as years went on, and this philosophy was
applied to the concrete case, there ensued a period
of discrimination and skepticism. The issues of
life, as thus determined, did not always seem to
balance up even ; nor was the character thereby

150 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

engendered altogether desirable. To say nothing

of the exceptions to the law of reward and pun

ishment, which became so numerous as

The ensuing

period of dis- to invalidate the rule, there seemed to

crimination

SsmSkepU" ^6 f°stere(l a certain strain of hard
ness, in spirit and motive, a dominant
regard for self-interest, at which the noblest man
hood instinct, pausing in a kind of dismay, was
moved to enter protest. Time and growing insight
were proving that a screw was loose somewhere in
this matter of sanctions and sequels ; new adjust
ments must be made, new definitions of things
devised.

The first vital attack on the Wisdom system, as
given in the Book of Job, was none the less valid
The first ^or being delivered by Satan. It urged
tna* this baldly sanctioned principle

01 Job< makes it directly possible for life to be
a brazen barter and commercialism ; the fear of
God and righteous living being merely an invest
ment put forth for the profit it will yield. The
question is raised whether a man will serve God
when he is not paid for it ; whether his goodness
and piety — otherwise his character — are some
thing manufactured for sale, as it were, and with
reference to a reward which is essentially an
outside matter, or whether there is something
intrinsic in manhood, an unbought and inalienable

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 151

integrity of life. In the person of Job, as he sur
vives the utmost futy of disease and bereavement
and spiritual darkness, the answer, pronounced
triumphantly for man's godlikeness as intrinsic,
raises the standard of manhood to an immeasura
bly higher plane ; and the map of life is greatly
ennobled and enlarged.

In our Book of Koheleth the new question that
is in virtual control is, What is that thing reward

after all — that obiect to which all life

_ _ The further
and labor are so prevailingly keyed ? criticism, as

J embodied In

Everything that we can eat and wear S^S^
and build and work for is vanity ; it
brings satiety, but also inevitable disillusion and
disappointment. It does not pay for any outlay
of contrivance or endeavor. The blanch of decay,
the stamp of the transitory, is on the whole of it.
What is that good thing for man, that may be his
joy all the days of his life ? Can we reach any
thing that may be called profit, residuum, reward,
at all ? and especially when we have no choice but
a life of labor, of desperate struggle, to keep body
and soul together ? And the answer, no less tonic
than austere, is, Look for nothing better than you
can get right at hand, in the work that embodies
your best powers, your creative impulse, your
life's interests and ideals. On this you may lay
out, not only the capacity to enjoy, which is God-

152 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

given, but the mysterious pulsation of eternity
in your heart, which derives from the illimitable
powers of life.

Thus both these radically searching books, which
indeed have been definitely classed as skeptical,

make their way by forcing that primal
How these . , ,„. , . ,

books deepen law of Wisdom inward to the intrinsic
life in the
direction oi citadel of character ; not den vine: man-

tne spiritual.

hood nor impairing it, but deepening it,
by making it a spiritual thing. In Job it is dis
engaged from selfish commercialism, and centred
in intrinsic integral godlikeness. In Koheleth it
is rescued just as it is ready to flee for its reward
to another world, and centred in that work and
portion, with its attendant joy, which, on what
ever time it falls or in what vain environment
soever, makes its own heaven. Our map of life is
by this time a goodly domain, fair, diversified,
deeply explored.

All this, however, noble as it is, has revealed
only one hemisphere. That is why, with all its
But only in tonic cheer, Koheleth's book still re-
SSiSSbe- mains so pathetically sad. The Christ-
exKatfons bearing dove, the Christopher Columbus

of spiritual exploration, has not yet un
covered the west. We can realize this now, look
ing over from our more illumined hemisphere.
St. John, it will be remembered, not many gen-

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 153

erations later, draws a new map of life, on the
spiritual, which is the adult manhood projection,
in his words, " The law was given by ^^ ^ ^
Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ." And St. Paul records the result of the
later expedition, in his assertion that therein for
the first time life, and its correlate im- 2 TlmoUiy
mortality, were brought to light ; a life L 10-
which, by coming out full-orbed and furnished,
announces itself as an eternal thing, aware of its
future in the evolutionary course.

There is a life of law, demanding its dues nat
ural, social, and cosmic ; a life of work and liveli
hood, of enterprise and endurance, into Thefurnlgll-
which all our legitimate self-interests are
concentrated. This life has its noble
ideals of integrity and right, of "self-
reverence, self-knowledge, self-control ; " and no
jot or tittle can pass from it or be omitted till all
be fulfilled in soundness of manhood. Still, it is
only half of life. It is self -limited ; its regards,
after however ample a circuit, return eventually
to their starting-point. What wealth of ideal and
upbuilding such life engenders is merely the
comely furnishing of that half ; it cannot by any
fullness so flow over into the other hemisphere as
to complete the manhood creation. The Book of
Koheleth may be commended as the highest word,

154 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

on the whole, that can be said for this hemisphere
of being, the life of wise self-interest working
out its being's law. All the prudences, the econo
mies, the thrift, the industry, the good sense, the
tact of word and silence, the proud subordination
to lot, which self-respect and self-integrity dictate,
on our way through an exacting world, come to
light here as a practical sanity and level head.
The book, we may say, points out the fairest result
that would come if men were to obey the injunc
tion, Let this mind be in you which was also in
Benjamin Franklin. It moves in that matter-of-
fact region which, as another state of being is not
clearly in sight, will make the most of this.

Now this, when we compare it with some ideals

of life, is nothing short of noble. Omar Khayyam,

whose thoughts of life are in the same

wlihomar vein, reveals what is in his soul by say-
Khayydm. .

ing, " In a moment we die and are no

more ; we cannot wrest any clear knowledge of
the beyond from doctors and saints; things are
crooked and there is no setting them straight ;
therefore let us drink wine, and loaf in rose-gar
dens with women, and be lazy." Koheleth shows
his deeper and sturdier fibre, his truer judgment
of the intrinsic man, by saying, " Yes, all this
about dying, about our ignorance of the future,
about our futile efforts to straighten a crooked

THE ISSUE IN CHARACTER 155

world, is true, too true ; therefore let us take joy
in the work we can do, and follow the dim prompt
ing of eternity in our heart, and stand undismayed
before our fate, and fear God." Then, whatever
is or is to be, we have gained what our moment of
being was given us for, we have secured the one
thing of which we could be sure, and the surety of
this nothing can take away.

Only half of life, we have said, only one hemi
sphere in the map of full-orbed existence. When
we think of the other half, the tremen
dous consummation that has come with Smother * °*
the inflowing, or rather the overflowing, 1
of grace and its spiritual initiative, we become
aware how incomplete it is after all, how majestic
was the event when Christ, setting up the out
ward current of love in life, transported manhood
to an exalted region where law is dead, or rather
risen glorified to the law of the spirit of life. It
is in that sacrificial spirit alone that the profound-
est life-vrJues are embodied ; in self-impelled, free-
moving grace alone that is reached the full play
of the manhood character, the essential truth of
being. When love is actuating, not only are the
obligations met ; the work into which is already
woven the joy of skill and creative achievement
glories into a divine end and use ; it is fitted
in, however lowly its tools and workshop, with

156 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

the great life-giving, steadily building work of
God.

If, however, we must leave Koheleth in the twi
light hemisphere, we can still say this : he is on
Koheleth at *^e frontier nearest the great continent
nearestthe °f light. We think again of the Epicu-

theotier* rean man, the loafer of Omar Khay-
hemisphere. , , , T_

yam s rose-garden, and our Koheleth

ideal looks no more paltry but strong and comely.
There is not enough of Omar's man to build a
structure of grace and truth upon. Of Koheleth,
however, we may say: taking what his era can
see, and using it for the highest value he has yet
the standard to measure, he is directing the life of
law to the integral fullness where it is best fitted to
take on, as its supplement, the spirit of grace and
truth. As we look back to the Old Testament dis
pensation, and think what readiness it is making
for the dispensation of the Son of Man, we seek
for some point where, like the ball of the game
ster, manhood, though only partly developed, shall
be left in position for the next play. This is what
Koheleth defines for us. He has nobly forced the
soul away from speculative dreams to the perma
nent values of the life which is ; so when grace and
truth come, to supplement the life which gains and
thrives by the life which loves and imparts, they
have something solid on which to build.

CHAPTER IV

THE LITERARY SHAPING

OF the fortune which has befallen this Book
of Koheleth since it was first given to the

world, no phenomenon has been so re-

Diverse in-
markable as the extraordinary diversity terpretations

of interpretation which has gathered
round it. Every new expositor has
deemed himself bound, at the first step, to throw
away all the conclusions of his predecessors. Every
new generation has contemplated the book from
a different angle, or has seen therein its own pre
vailing attitude toward the universe reflected in
a different way. All this betokens, of course, that
the tissue of the book is complex, with points of
contact for each advancing age to lay hold of
and appropriate. But that it is therefore not ho
mogeneous, not unitary, — well, this is a matter
to be subjected to test as an open question, not
asserted or assumed from superficial impression.
And the only way to get at the decision is by
the careful putting of part and part together in
the ascertained spirit of the whole book. One

158 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

result of that " speaking out in meeting " which
has so marked its effect has been that all shades
of bias and unconformity, having seen their own
face therein, have proceeded to reconstruct the
whole body of the thought in their own image.
Nor has the book fared better at the hands of
those to whom it was suspect. They too have tried
to account for its supposed aberrations by some
strange inverted system which without tolerance
or sympathy they have created to mould it in. It
is evident that the judgment of its literary shaping
has depended largely, perhaps mainly, on the point
of view which the interpreter's mind or the spirit
of his creed has dictated for it.

All this is as it must be ; nor has the present
interpreter any disposition to put himself outside

the category. A point of view this Study
Favorable- . _ '
ness of the also has, irom wnicn the texture and

tea rotation framewor^ °^ *ne book are judged ; and
to say frankly that this point of view
has been taken in sympathy, rather than in sus
picion or hostility, is merely to say that Koheleth,
whoever he was or whenever he wrote, has been
assumed to be a man of good sense and good faith.
From his era and range of insight he had acquired
a combination of data which made his verdict of
things reasonable, perhaps inevitable. Our busi
ness is to find his combination, his own point of

THE LITERARY SHAPING 159

view. We have, I believe, a notable advantage
here. His peculiar point of view is one which the
spirit of our latest time contributes to make
luminous and sane. As in other centuries, so now,
the age may see in the book its own features re
flected. The present Study is written in the con
viction that now at the end of days Koheleth's
counsels are eminently timely ; and as it has ad
vanced, the feeling has deepened that no former
age, probably, has so nearly possessed Koheleth's
combination as does our era of hospitable science,
tolerant faith, honored industry. Surely, a genera
tion which has found a gospel in Omar Khayyam
may walk congenially with this nobler product of
the same spiritual vein.

It remains, then, from Koheleth's point of view,
to trace how the work before us has shaped itself

as it were from within, and what vistas

The literary
of thought and counsel have opened out

from its central concept. Spenser's idea,

as applied to a vital work of literature, book<

is no mere poetical conceit, but a sound structural

principle : —

" For of the soule the bodie forme doth take ;
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."

Our study is essentially an inquiry how the soul
of the book projects itself into form. The remark

160 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

has been made of Socrates that " his object was
to impart not any positive system, but a frame of
mind: to make men conscious of their ignorance,
and of their need of enlightenment." If in like
manner Koheleth, with that monitory caution
which really means a more grounded faith, induces
an accordant frame of mind, we are in the only
true position to see how in each case this counsel
should be given and not another, and how it be
longs at this point, not otherwhere.

It is on this question of the soul of the book,

however, that the age in which we live has been

and still is much confused; working

t£%so°o?, w itself clear, perhaps, from old or hide-

atSepre- bound preconceptions. Let us first ask,
sent day.

then, where in general the expositors

stand with reference to its body of thought and
structure.

The present-day attitude toward Koheleth may

be reckoned from a remark of Professor A. B.

Davidson's in the " Encyclopedia Bib-

Professor .

Davidson's ijca>" " It is only in comparatively
modern times," he says, " that any real
progress has been made in the interpretation of
Ecclesiastes. The ancients were too timid to allow
the Preacher to speak his mind. Modern inter-

THE LITERARY SHAPING 161

preters recognize a strong individuality in the

book, and are more ready to accept

its natural meaning, though a certain

desire to tone down the thoughts of cleslastes<

the Preacher is still discernible in some English

works."

This account of Professor Davidson's we may
supplement in brief terms somehow thus : When
the modern interpreters plucked up heart The book,g
to let Koheleth speak his real mind, the facWsV
first thing they discovered was that he conslstency-
was traversing many a traditional religious senti
ment. They could not go on with the book, indeed,
without seeming to reap from it whole crops of
pessimism, agnosticism, Epicureanism, and other
things of dubious, not to say distinctly dangerous,
nature. Yet side by side with these, and appar
ently mocked by them, were equally flourishing
growths of wise and pious precept. The book, in
fact, from the point of view in which they were
schooled, was not only out of unity with its scrip
ture canon ; it was not at unity with itself. To
give it a reasonable consistency of tissue, one must
needs assume, it seemed, either several minds or
several moods of one mind engaged in the produc
tion of it. Between these two postulates, roughly
speaking, we may regard the question of its inter
pretation as standing to-day.

162 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

The idea that a book so obviously inviting such
an interpretation may be the work of several col
laborating minds does not seem to have

site author- taken so speedy hold of the critical con-
ship theory. . *, .

sciousness as the prevalent theories of

syndicated bible-making would lead one to expect.
The " strong individuality " of the book it was,
perhaps, which kept it from dismemberment ; at
any rate, it remained for a surprisingly long time
intact. The composite authorship bacillus has,
however, arrived at last, and fortunately with so
virulent effect that if Koheleth survives this at
tack, he will not be likely to suffer so severely
again. Professor Siegfried, one of the latest Ger
man commentators, shall give the diag-
InNowack's . T] -111

Handkom- nosis. It is impossible, he says, — a
mentar zum
aiten Testa- rather absolute word, but he says it, —

that the Book of Koheleth, as it lies be
fore us, could have been the product of one mind.
In his view it took anywhere from six to perhaps
twenty men to get those twelve brief chapters into
final running order. The man who composed the
main body of the argument, whom he labels Q1,
was " a pessimistic philosopher, a Jew who had
suffered shipwreck of faith." On reading his
screed, Q2, the Epicurean glossator, who evidently
had a better digestion, endeavored to lighten the
too insistent gloom of the book by inserting sundry

THE LITERARY SHAPING 163

praises of eating and drinking. Then Q3, the
sage glossator, tried to swing the thought into the
line of the dominant philosophy by putting in
pleas for wisdom. Whereat Q4, the pietist glos
sator, grieved at the low spiritual tone of the
book, slipped in certain gently corrective passages
about judgment and worship and gifts of God.
Of Q6 there were several, who as they came along
added to the growing cairn by casting in here and
there contributions from the current stock of pro
verb literature. In addition to these numbered Q's,
some further agency was required to correct proof,
so to say, and prepare the work for its final appeal
to posterity. It took two Redactors to do this, one
to start the book and put in now and then a little
more vanity, the other to end it ; and in final addi
tion to these, two appendices, from hands hitherto
unclassed, to round out the epilogue. Thus the
work, which looks and acts so much like literature
as to deceive the very elect, turns out to have been
evolved much after the manner of a city directory,
with its revised issue for each new year's changes
of residence and population ; and no one will deny,
who justly notes its vitality and influence, that it
was a remarkable job.

Of such critical ingenuity as this the estran
ging feature is that it suggests something made
outside and put on. It is not sympathetic ; it

164 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

deals with the surface, rather than with the depths

where thought and insight are at work shaping

an inevitable utterance. One who has

tiai aim- really entered into the heart of literary
cultyof it. J.

creativeness, beyond its mechanism and

grammar, is moved to inquire if Professor Sieg
fried ever went to work in his critical laboratory
and tried to make literature in that way. One
would like to see the thing authentically done.
Books that take living hold of men, that plough
deep, to say nothing of books pulsing with two mil
lenniums of vitality like this of Koheleth's, do not
seem to fall together quite so fortuitously as this
nowadays. When they do, we are inclined to accord
to them the wonder due to freaks and marvels.

If this elaborate scheme, or perhaps any scheme
that postulates a patchwork of authorship, fails to
The com o- carrv ^s own evidence, it must be con
traction* fesse(l we do not fare much better with
theory. ^ yery prevajent theory, virtual if not

avowed, of several untempered moods, or humors,
of one author, expressing themselves each accord-
to the ing to the headlong impulse of the mo-

lfwesiajuis men*- Some such assumption as this
Cambridge we must carry in mind, in reading such
expositors as Dr. Samuel Cox and Dean

Plumptre. They are willing to let Ko-
heleth speak his mind, but they cannot always con-

THE LITERARY SHAPING 165

cede that he knows his mind. The baffling prob
lems of the world, acting on his sensitive nerves,
warp him out of his orbit ; he loses his head and
talks wildly. Accordingly, we find him at one mo
ment " rising ... to almost Christian heights of
patience and resignation, and holy trust in the
providence of God," the next moment " smitten
by the injustice and oppressions of men into the
depths of a pessimistic materialism." Dean Plump-
tre endeavors to motive this unstable equilibrium
of the book by taking the name Koheleth to mean
the Debater, and making the book accordingly the
record not of a victory but of a conflict still in

progress and uncertain. " The ' Two

Plumptre,

Voices' of our own poet were there, fe°clpe^sg3
he says ; " or rather, the three voices, of
the pessimism of the satiated sensualist, and the
wisdom, such as it was, of the Epicurean thinker,
and the growing faith in God, were heard in
strange alternation ; now one, now another, utter
ing itself, as in an inharmonious discord, to the
very close of the book."

This description of Dean Plumptre' s has taken
the world's fancy so that by it the
thought of the book is assessed. Kohe- conception

of It as the

leth, popular expositors say, is the lie-
brew Two Voices. Well, in Tennyson's
poem of that theme one of the voices was discred-

166 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

ited and silenced. Not so here, as men are esti
mating the book. We are at the mercy of the
vein or humor that happens to be uppermost, with
no resolving principle or spirit to make the final
choice. The logic of one utterance may be, Do
all that is implied in a life of self-indulgence ; l
of another, Do all that is implied in the fear of
God ; of still another, Yet be not too righteous or
too wise. In short, we are left all abroad, with a
pained idea that an accredited book of the scrip
ture canon is somehow lending itself to making
life a discord and delusion.

Of this distraction theory — as we may call it
-a word more, before we leave it, should be

HOW this sa^' "^ *s a v*ew k-^3 over fr°m a
Soli witt time» now happily past, when Arthur
Hugh dough and Matthew Arnold,
Amiel and George Eliot, were brooding over
enigmas of life and death; when even minds
predisposed to faith, like the Laureate Tennyson,
were making such virtue of the faith that lives in
honest doubt that their emphasized honesty almost
created the doubts for the sake of the spiritual

1 Of chapter ix. 9 (Survey v. 123), for instance, which he trans
lates : " Enjoy life with any woman whom thou lovest," Dr. Cox
says, ' ' As the Hebrew preacher is here speaking under the mask
of the lover of pleasure, this immoral maxim is at least consist
ent with the part he plays." — The Expositor's Bible, Ecdesias-
tes, page 100.

THE LITERARY SHAPING 167

dead-lift of overcoming them. A time of tension
and strain it seems to us now, as we look back
upon it, a time not without a profound vein of
morbidness ; and interpreters of Koheleth, read
ing then by the light of their day, imbued the
book with something of the same morbid hue.
They had some reason, for the book is sad ; from
one point of view the saddest book in scrip
ture. Its appeal to the spirit of that time was
very searching. Still, the fact remains that it
left the impression of an unresolved discord, of
an unrelieved stress. A very different temper of
things has succeeded, doubtless by wholesome re
action. The spiritual tension is much mitigated.
Men are not so tired as they were. They are not
thinking so much about what is going to happen
to us after we die, not caring so much about it.
They are more content to let problems be prob
lems ; are closing their In Memoriam and open
ing their Omar Khayyam. A wave of better
cheer has swept over the world. And whether
this connotes a sounder spiritual fibre and in
sight or not, certain it seems that a more tem
pered light on the spiritual landscape is putting
things in new perspective and coloring.

The result, as we turn this later light on Ko
heleth, is to bring into the field of view an ele
ment of the book from which hitherto, as it would

168 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

seem, the world's eyes have been holden. And
this is what we may call distinctively its element
HOW the °^ s°lution, that other side of its prob-
gievesrocc£ lem *n which the raveled threads are
openuie6" gathered up into a self-justifying fabric
of counsel. The great lack in the view
of the book hitherto, as it has been the lack of the
questing ages, was some worthy goal of poetic
justice to compensate for all its outlay of sad
censure. It has seemed to leave men in a welter
of turmoil and gloom. Nor has the matter been
greatly alleviated by making it the record of
shifting gales of mood ; still less by regarding it
as the hodge-podge of a set of timid and tinker
ing Q's. As the Scotchman said of his too mild
dram, we " don't seem to get any forwarder."
But meanwhile the age has been getting on, or
perhaps has been settling back upon a saner eval
uation of the intrinsic man, and of the compen
sating joys of man's work. There is a something,
not vanity nor shivering doubt, to be secured as
a solid asset of life here on earth ; something so
true to our higher manhood that we can afford,
reckoning ourselves alive to it, to reckon ourselves
dead to the chances of fate or destiny beyond.
And turning to Koheleth we find the selfsame
thing there, in plain sight, reached by our same
spiritual approach, and insisted on as the only

THE LITERARY SHAPING 169

solution available. Is it not worth while, then, to
reopen his book and see how his thought as a body
of thought stands related to this suggestion of
poetic justice? It may turn out that we have the
real key to his puzzling yet strangely vital book.

II

Let us begin with the ancient title. " Words of
Koheleth, Son of David, King in Jerusalem ; "
thus the author himself, whoever he Whatlsin
was, heads his book. Choosing to call *
himself by a symbolical name, he so words his
title as to identify himself with King Solomon.
What has he done this for ?

If to this question we give the answer of the un
critical ages, Because he really was King Solomon,
we raise more difficulties than we solve. Theag_
He does not assume to be a king through- |^2JScof
out ; he drops the role as soon as certain authorship,
practical uses of it are exhausted. Nor indeed does
he speak like a king at all, still less as the his
toric Solomon would have spoken ; and at the
end, where the name occurs in the third
person, he is called frankly what he has
counted for all along, a sage who is concerned to
teach the people knowledge. The disguise is too
transparent even to cover an attempt to deceive.
We may roundly say the authorship of the book

170 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

is on the face of it assumed. While our thought
is thereby directed to an historic personage, it is
only, so to say, an emanation of that personage,
only the thing which that personage may be held
to symbolize, that we have any color for taking.
And taking that, we have enough.

For the literary motive of that assumption, if
such were sought, lies on the surface. In the
its literary name Solomon lay worlds of connotation
for the Hebrew mind ; implications of
specific character quite apart from the general
suggestion of royal dignity. The assumption of
this authorship is merely the shorthand way of
making these connotations available, conveying
thereby much that is of prime importance yet
need not be asserted at all. In two ways the
thought is thus enriched.

First, with the name Solomon is conveyed the

thought of the Solomonic resources : his riches, and

the power that these give him to do what-

monic ° soever he will, his freedom and bound-
resources -, ., - , - ,
for making less opportunity to sound the depths and

induction shoals of life. An experiment in living,
on the grandest scale, was required by
the argument. Solomon, in the Hebrew conscious
ness, was the one historic personage who had the
means and power, without stint, to carry such an
experiment out. If a man of less commanding

THE LITERARY SHAPING 171

resource than he had been represented as mak
ing it, some element of the problem might sup-
posably have been omitted. If a man so ideally
placed cannot reach a conclusive answer, no one
can ; if he can reach it, it is reached indeed. To
the objection, here rising, that the value of these
experiments in life depends on their having been
actually made, and by an actual not a fictitious
Solomon, it is, I think, a valid answer to say, the
book was written in an era of ripened sentiment,
wherein the great major premise, that all is vanity,
had ceased to be, if it ever had been, a question
of fact yet to be verified, and would pass without
question as a universal truth. The Solomonic
report, then, is rather illustrative than argumen
tative ; it is merely a way of owning what every
one in his heart knows to be true, that dust and
disillusion are inherent in worldly ideals and pur
suits, and in greater degree as the soul wreaks
itself on the world more blindly.

This side of the Solomonic tradition is used only
a little while, and then disappears. The kingly
role is dropped as soon as the kingly TheSolo.
moral is pointed, — an additional sign ™00ta!i0n°X~
this, of the purely literary character of Wisdom-
the assumption. A second connotation of the name,
however, surviving, gives tacit classification to the
whole book : the tradition of wisdom that for

172 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

whatever reason has flowed down from the Solo
monic age and court. This Book of Koheleth is a
work of the Wisdom or Hokhma literature ; the
writer has only to stamp it with Solomon's name
to say that. The Hebrews, as is well known, iden
tified the great currents of their literary activity
with historic names. Their legal code, with the
histories attending its enactments, was fathered
upon Moses; to the end of the chapter Moses
- whether understood as actual personage or as
spirit and power — was its originator. Their lyric
poetry, whether pre-exilic or post-exilic, was simi
larly named from the traditional first sweet singer
of Israel, David. Their body of practical wisdom,
or as we should say philosophy, a philosophy whose
later utterances may be almost contemporary with
Christ, took the name of that large-hearted, in
quiring, judicious king, Solomon. To identify the
Book of Koheleth with Solomon, then, is not a
crude attempt to deceive ; it is a shorthand way
of laying down its programme and character. The
book exists, as we know from the very name of it,
to gather practical lessons for life, lessons embody
ing wisdom, as Solomon long ago gave the impulse
and model.

One more element of suggestion we get from
the symbolical name Koheleth itself. Derived from
the verb ^nj?, to call together, a name apparently

THE LITERARY SHAPING 173

made for this particular use, and at a time when,
because the language was a little archaic, it
had to be manufactured, as it were,

and retained still a kind of book-flavor ; theame0
, , ™ . , /. . . . . Koheletli.

rounded on with a feminine termination

though not construed with a feminine verb, appar
ently for the sake of an abstract significance, —
the name, with these grammatical facts lying on
the surface, has roused endless discussion. Does
it mean one who calls people together in order to
teach them, in other words an Ecclesiastes or
Preacher, as the Authorized Version renders it ;
does it mean a Debater, equally responsive to all
sides and moods, as Dean Plumptre with his dis
traction theory maintains; or does it mean one
who culls or calls together utterances of wisdom
into ordered collections, as Koheleth at the end of
the book is represented as doing? These three,
out of the multitude of queries, are all I need
mention. On the whole we shall do best, I think,
to stick to the name Koheleth without trying to
translate it. If not luminous, it is at least not
misleading. If I were to try for an equivalent, I
should call to mind that kindly sage described in
chapter xii., who, because he was wise, Eplloglie
still brought the people knowledge from 3~6'
stores new and old, a character that shines out be
tween the lines of the whole course of the thought.

174 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

The word that would most nearly name such a
person, it seems to me, is Counselor. We feel
throughout the argument that we are in the pre
sence of a man who has made himself competent
to sit in the gate, the centre of such groups as are
interested to turn aside and listen to ripe counsel
on the issues of life.

If this is a just interpretation of the name and
the man, one more note, not unimportant, may be

drawn from it. A counselor is one who.
Connotation , . ,, , . ,.

of the name being master oi his audience, is presum-
Counselor.

ably master of his own moods and

thoughts. His very mission is to guide, to explain,
to conduct from the puzzling and troubled to a
clearer and solider landing-stage. This character
accords best with the large tone and tenor of the
book. It does not accord with a pessimistic mud
dle, nor with the frantic eddyings of a sentiment
that is one thing when you feel this way and a
totally discordant thing when you feel that way.
I for one am not sorry it does not. The book may
not be optimistic ; no book of its unfinal era could
well have the data for that. But it assuredly is
melioristic ; it is designed and carried out in the
true spirit of wise counsel, the spirit of sound
sense, helpfulness, uplifting. We feel it all in
that description of the author at the end ; we are
heartened by it as we go along ; we gather it not
unfairly from the name.

THE LITERARY SHAPING 175

III

From the title let us turn now to con
sider the motive and method of the book method oi
., , . the book,

itself.

Like all the works of Wisdom literature, this
book, calling itself simply " Words of Koheleth,"
makes no claim on a systematic order.
The type of structure, if structure it can J£,ee??neral
be called, that seems to have been con- the books o?
ceived for all this class of works, a type
exemplified most purely in its earliest monument
the Proverbs of Solomon, was simply a Proverbsx .
miscellany of detached observations, les- xxlXl
sons condensing a treatise into a maxim, and not
depending on neighbor maxims either for support
or validity. In ranging itself with the books of
Hebrew Wisdom, this book makes no professions
of departing from the type. If it turns out to be
more continuous and systematic than a miscellany,
we are to discover the fact by internal evidence.

But while, as the Wisdom literature developed,
nothing more systematic was avowed, the structu
ral type did not stand still. The discov
ery of untoward tendencies and of ex- Some mo™
ceptions to the large law of Wisdom, as andcoSin-
already mentioned, was itself an influence
to concentrate thought from the obiter dicta form

176 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

to a form more mutually supporting and motived.
The claim of continuity, in some application, was
making itself felt. Even in the later portions of
the Book of Proverbs there was a tendency to
lengthen the mashal, or maxim-lesson, from a
sententious couplet to a little essay or parable, in
which some notes of the course as well as of the
conclusion of the thought were given. In the Book
of Job a much more complex structure was adopted,
in which the maskal was connected by an under
lying thread of controversy, and still more deeply
by a thread of narrative ; the whole thus tracing
a history of spiritual struggle and progress.

Here in this Book of Koheleth we come upon
an interesting forward step in structure. The

principle, the connecting thread, is in-
TheBookoI , ,. ' ., .

Koheleth ductive. Ine writer is concerned first
built on the

inductive of all with getting at facts, the hard
principle.

uncolored facts of existence, and with
letting these facts lead where they will, without
attempt to prejudge or palliate them. It is time
enough to draw inferences or deduce lessons when
the facts are all in. The verdict is not obvious
from the start, as in a homily, but comes gradu
ally into sight and reason. And so while these
facts of existence are being gathered and mar
shaled, there may be a stage in the argument
wherein assertions are left as it were in abeyance,

THE LITERARY SHAPING 177

not a conclusion, but a premise or datum awaiting
its solution ; truth indeed, but not the whole truth,
nor the key-truth. Of such nature, it seems to
me, are all those cardinal utterances which have
proved most startling : the asseverations of van
ity, of the lack of profit, of the return of things
on themselves, of the leveling power of death,
of the lack of outlook beyond. All these are facts
viewed phenomenally, just as they look, before
any practical or dogmatic inference is drawn from
them ; not things to be proved, but things to be
conceded on the way to things more momentous ;
above all, things to be faced courageously and
dared to their worst. They are data of a kind of
induction ; and before them all is the unspoken
question what the soul is to do about it.

A manner of procedure this, very familiar to
our modern times, being in fact the rigorous re
quisite of the scientific spirit ; but so strangeness
foreign to the natural working of the
Hebrew mind that this pioneer attempt,
as we may call it, has caused great be
wilderment among interpreters. The very genius of
the masJial or maxim literature seemed to require
that a truth should not be reasoned out but as
serted, and that too in the crystallized apothegm
form which connoted long attrition and shaping
until every particle of the finished truth was in

178 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

its fated place. The component dicta of a body
of truth were like bits of a broken magnet, each
a complete magnet with its positive and negative
poles. We can realize, therefore, how estranging
it would be at first, and how much like bewilder
ment or inconsistency, if the bearing of a state
ment were left uncertain until something else were
put with it, — something to tell what the vanity
here or the dimness beyond amounts to, and how
to adjust life to it. Herein lies in great part, I
think, the explanation of the discordancy of view
which has so divided interpreters, driving some to
their distraction theories and others to the put
tering postulates of composite authorship. We
have before us simply the parts or involvements
of a thought not yet fitted together, the data of
an induction.

Of this inductive thread running through the
book we are of course not to require all our mod
ern apparatus of hypothesis, accumula-
tiSTs itseii " tion of data, cautionary test, patient

scientific verification. The attempt is too early for
temper.

that, too early to be other than crude.

What is mainly to be noted is its touch of the
real scientific temper, its disposition to concede to
its observations, strange and undesired though
they be, the tribute of ascertained facts. And
this puts Koheleth in the company of those scien-

THE LITERARY SHAPING 179

tific minds of our age of which I have already
spoken, and in that spirit which is distinguished
" by openness of vision, by the determi
nation to exhibit reality, and to hope iisqqgea
for just so much as may be expected, by
the bold use of such hypotheses as can be brought
to book, and by the steady temper that " will not
be unmanned by mystery.1 The outcome, too, is as
nearly our modern one as the more meagre data
of his age would permit. He too, when his whole
testimony is in and his verdict made up, belongs
to " the literature of hope, of faith in the known
life of man, and of a hard-won optimism."

IV

To show this, in the face of long intrenched
estimates of Koheleth, is, I am aware, the bur
den of proof which the present Study, committed

1 In the following description we can trace, as more fully de
veloped, much of the same spirit that the foregoing pages have
discerned in Koheleth : "The scientific spirit signifies poise be
tween hypothesis and verification, between statement and proof,
between appearance and reality. It is inspired by the impulse of
investigation tempered with distrust and edged with curiosity.
It is at once avid of certainty and sceptical of seeming. Mirage
does not fascinate, nor blankness dispirit it. It is enthusiasti
cally patient, nobly literal, candid, tolerant, hospitable. It has
no major proposition to advocate or defend, no motive beyond
that of attestation. It shrinks from temerity in assertion at the
same time that it is animated with the ardor of divination." —
Brownell, Victorian Prose Masters, page 67.

180 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

as it is, must with whatever seeming effrontery
take upon itself. It must run the risks

the course of inherent in following out a radically

new interpretation.
One thing of course must be conceded. We

are studying an ancient book, wherein the literary

work-tools which have become so keen
The initial _ _ . .

impression and deft in our hands are more rudely
of the book.

and crudely handled ; nor indeed is the

course of Koheleth's thought so simple and trans
parent as to yield ad aperturam that sense of or
ganism, unitary, sequential, interrelated, which we
have come to demand of a modern literary work.
Most critics maintain that no coherent plan under
lies it. The older miscellany idea, they aver, proves
too strong. Koheleth starts indeed with a promis
ing statement of the situation ; goes on awhile with
a fairly consistent story of his royal experiments
in life ; ends eventually (or some glossator for
him) with a " conclusion of the whole matter," as
if there were really some ordered matter to con
clude ; but somehow in the space between he seems
to have lost his thread, and through large tracts of
his book just to have dumped down the random con
tents of his portfolio, merely putting in enough
cement of his own personality to give them a turbid
and doubting tinge. It is some such initial impres
sion as this that we have to meet and work upon.

THE LITERARY SHAPING 181

Here, however, we must reckon with a new ele
ment of the case, namely, the element of purpose
and dominant emphasis. What is the
motive, the unit of insight, that is cen- Saig^^a
traUy operative in the book? From emphasis-
what station of knowledge and sympathy, of con
viction and reaction, is Koheleth laying out a map
of life? On the answer to this question, which
has been the main subject of the foregoing chap
ters, we need not here dwell ; though it is a plain
truth that the whole question of the book's plan
turns upon it.

From the point of view currently taken, that it is
the mere record of an embittered and disillusioned
soul, the book is indeed a chaos ; we How the
cannot read it otherwise. But this may j^??ent oi
be the fault of the point of view. A S?akes°the
station not at the just angle, or not high
enough up to command the whole landscape, may
merely bring into the field of vision one class of
phenomena and leave the others invisible or lying
unrelated. This is rather strikingly illustrated by
the scheme of division which Professor Jn1h9
Moulton has prefixed to his edition of Reade?s
the book ; wherein between the " essays "
into which the body of thought supposedly falls
are sandwiched virtual confessions of bafflement
headed "Miscellanea." This may be the best that

182 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

the case admits ; but in the mind that craves co
herence it raises the query how the thought, in
moving through such a course, came to scatter so
many irrelevant chips and splinters ; which query
indeed passes into the doubt whether, after all,
the lines of logical cleavage, self-consistent and
self -justifying, have really been discovered, or even
can be from such approach. Much the same doubt
must needs rise, however ungraciously, from most
of the prevailing analyses of the book. They have
about them, in spite of their ingenuity or perhaps
because of it, the note of the arbitrary ; as if they
were a manufactured thing forced on the thought,
or as if the dubious best had been made of some
distraction theory wherein Koheleth's verdict was
regarded as out of tune with itself and perpetually
losing the keynote. It is clear, to my mind, that
the fault with all these expositors lies in the point
of view, the unit of insight, which, incorrectly
taken, compels them to read the book as a body
of thought largely heterogeneous and uncoordi
nated. They have chosen a position from which
they cannot see the wood for the trees.

After this wholesale onslaught, nothing remains
for me, of course, but to show what comes from
assuming that Koheleth, though acknowledging
fully the evil of things, is yet working steadily
upward from chaos to cosmos, from the negative

THE LITERARY SHAPING 183

subjection of all under vanity to the positive emer
gence of the self-governed soul and the intrinsic
man. This assumption, to begin with,
is not taken arbitrarily. It comes from

a careful balancing of all the elements trolling
of the case. And it agrees best with the
book's portrayal of Koheleth himself ; who appears
as a kingly, kindly counselor, aiming to raise his
people to a table-land of strength and wisdom,
rather than as a bewildered Q1 requiring a body
guard of emendators to keep his thought from
tumbling everything into ruins. Nor is it without
plain points of definition and support appearing
throughout the course of the thought. Let us
begin with these.

As we go carefully through the book, searching
for its salient and character-giving features, we
come upon a number of passages that
reiterate substantially the same counsel,

, ... , - in tie book.

— namely, rejoice in your work, tor

work is your portion here, and you know not what
shall be elsewhere or hereafter, and the capacity to
rejoice is the gift of God. These passages, which
read as if they were meant to be landing-stages
of inference or counsel, are varied in expression
as they succeed each other, in two principal ways :
first, as they bring out to greater relative promi
nence some aspect of the advice fitted to the range

184 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

of thought immediately preceding ; and secondly,
as they grow in each repetition in volume and
fervor of conviction. They form thus, as compared
with each other, a kind of cumulative series. The
question very naturally rises, May not these pas
sages, in the author's mind, stand in close relation
to the progressive movement of his inquiry ? In
other words, were they not to him what the cul
mination of a chapter, or the enforcement of an
argument, would be to us ?

Acting on this suggestion as a clue, and study
ing the portions of the book thus bounded, we

find the work revealing a fairly plain
wheicdhvthese cleavage of thought. The proem at the

beginning and the epilogue at the end
are already obvious ; and between these, according
to my estimate, the work falls into a division of
seven sections, to which, adopting Koheleth's own
in Survey characterization of his investigations, I

have given the name Surveys. Of these
Surveys the first two and the last are rather
more finished and interrelated than the rest, pre
senting the type more rounded out ; whether be
cause the subjects of the others did not admit so
close ordering, or because the author was unable
to give the finishing touches to the others, it is
not easy to say. There is, however, when we get
the subjects well digested, a traceable similarity

THE LITERARY SHAPING 185

of procedure throughout the successive Surveys.
Each begins with a group of facts or observations
designed apparently to state in candid and un
equivocal terms some puzzle or problem of life.
Following this are several stages of related detail
or subsidiary counsel ; the whole rounded off with
a kind of solution stage, generally giving with
appropriate amplification the counsel about work
and joy which I have already mentioned, and
thereby clinching the subject under contemplation.
Thus all the Surveys, according to their subject-
matter, proceed more or less distinctly by way of
induction and application, making clear first the
fact, then the soul's recourse in view of the fact.
As a whole, too, the body of the thought exhibits
somewhat the same large movement. In the first
Survey the induction of facts predominates ; it is
thus of more preliminary nature, less suggestive of
a solution, than the rest. As the book advances,
however, the solvent, the positive and construc
tive tissue, comes more clearly into cogency and
volume, as it were by successive surges ; until
by the time we reach the seventh Survey, as the
inductive data have been disposed of in detail, the
thought has become almost purely applicative, and
the unquiet abeyance of unsolved problems has
disappeared.

Such, in rude outline, is what I conceive to be

186 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

the structural principle of the book. To be ex
hibited clearly, it needs more extended comparing

of part with part than can well be made
The central
thread o« here; from the Outline on page 209,

division. below, and the Commentary, the reader
can see how it proves itself in detail. It may be
advisable here, though, before leaving this part
of our study, to run rapidly over the successive
Surveys, with reference to their central thread,
and their claim to unitary and coherent struc
ture.

The Proem (chapter i. 2-11), which I entitle
The Fact, and the Question, makes absolute con
cession of vanity everywhere : vanity in
nature, revealed by the return of things
on themselves ; vanity in the human soul, which is
never satisfied and can find nothing new ; vanity
in the ongoings of history, wherein everything
passes and is forgotten. Confronting all this is
the question, " What profit hath man in all his
labor ? " which question is left for the course of
the book to give such answer as it can.

The First Survey (chapter i. 12-ii. 26), which
I entitle An Induction of Life, enters the world
The First °^ a:^a^rs a* **s best, by recounting, in
survey. fae assumed personality of Solomon,
Koheleth's quest among the worldly values of life,
and his encounter with the bewildering fact of

THE LITERARY SHAPING 187

death ; from all which returning unsatisfied, he
leaves the solution with God, whose compensating
gift to man, uniuvaded by vanity, is wisdom and
knowledge and joy.

The Second Survey (chapter iii.), which I enti
tle Times and Seasons, enters the world of events.
It contemplates man in a current of ac- The Second
tivities wherein time brings fitting occa- Surve7-
sions for the most contrasted things ; recognizes
in the world's heart a strain of eternity which,
however, manifests itself not in vaticination but
in hidden vitality ; and as a solution bids man
rejoice in his ordained work as his response unen-
thralled by time.

The Third Survey (chapters iv., v.), which
I entitle In a Crooked World, faces the evils
rising from ascendency of power, des- TheTMrd
potic government, organized injustice, £
hardness of heart, which in any view of the world
must stand as a discount from the ideal ; recounts
as mitigation, in various walks and duties, certain
better alternatives dictated by good sense ; and as
solution bids man rejoice in labor and its fruits,
as a good irreproachable, and as God's gift to
sweeten the life so exposed to evils.

The Fourth Survey (chapter vi. 1-vii. 18),
which I entitle Fate, and the Intrinsic Man, faces
the mystery within, and especially that strange

188 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

inability of man to attain a goal of satisfaction ;
The Fourth se*s before him> m maxim form, certain
Survey. better alternatives available for greater
wealth and worth of soul ; and as solution pro
poses a balance and sanity of mind, in utrumque
paratus, in the fear of God.

The Fifth Survey (chapter vii. 19-ix. 10),
which I entitle Avails of Wisdom, begins to mark
The Fifth a ^*^e m°re determinately the transition
Survey. from the puzzles of life to its prevailing
compensations. Allowing first for the discount that
must be made from man's asset of wisdom on ac
count of his froward devisings, it then sets wis
dom, in turn, over against the emergencies of life,
as tact, over against the veiling of judgment, and
over against the baffling hereafter ; proposing, as
a comprehensive solution, a full-ordered life of
joyful work and confidence, as thus best using the
existence of which we are sure.

The Sixth Survey (chapter ix. 11-xi. 6),
which I entitle Wisdom Encountering Time and
The sixth Chance, begins with a brief induction
survey. o£ ^Q thwarting element of time and
chance, then goes on to show, as a foil to this, wis
dom as a hidden power under the surface of things.
Its latter part, reverting to the more miscellaneous
character of the older proverb books, contains
aphorisms, both prose and poetic, on wisdom's

THE LITERARY SHAPING 189

works and words, and on practical prudence in
affairs.

The Seventh Survey (chapter xi. 7-xii. 7),
which I entitle Kejoice, and Remember, may be
regarded as at once the solution stage of TheSeventll
the previous Survey and more truly the Survey-
summarizing section of the whole body of counsel.
It inculcates joy and good heed for every period
of life, joy and the forward look for young man
hood, and mindfulness of the Creator before the
evil days come.

For the Epilogue (chapter xii. 8-14), I have
chosen the title The Nail Fastened. It repeats
the initial concession of vanity, as still The
holding good, but in the presence of it EPU°S™-
leaves man at the summit of his manhood, in
reverence and obedience awaiting the dawn of
judgment.

If the foregoing analysis has been justly made,
with the vital lines of its thought fairly related
and proportioned, I think we may say
the Book of Koheleth does not greatly regards the
fall behind the more self-conscious work- ship o* the
manship of our modern literature. Of
course its ways are not all our ways, and for the
cold, cautious work of induction it has twenty cen
turies' handicap ; it is, as it were, compend notes,
leaving by our standard gaps and holes ; but the

190 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

germs are there, and the ordering constructive
spirit. When we keep steadily in mind the goal
to which Koheleth is aiming, and the single-minded
mood of counsel that bears him on, we can pardon
many of those minor things which seem at first
sight to clog or obscure a pioneer effort. They are
merely pebbles in the current.

That there are such, that in spite of this re
versed unit of insight and motive the tissue of
Explanation *ke book still retains much of crabbed
ffiJSSS? obscurity, it would be fatuous to deny.
difficulties. of Ko]ieleth gtill remains one

of the puzzling works of Hebrew literature, per
haps the supreme example; though I think the
difficulty is greatly reduced, and that a careful
genetic inquiry will reveal at what different point
the source of it is to be located. Let us see how
this is.

One of these sources lies in the Hebrew language
itself ; which for the shadings, the precisions, the

flexibilities of philosophic discrimination,
Difficulties .

native to the is a rather unwieldy medium. Meant
language.

evidently for the more primitive and

rough-hewn work of literary expression, — plain
narrative or emotional appeal, — developed poeti
cally to the aphoristic rather than to a flowing and

THE LITERARY SHAPING 191

continuous texture; when a finely drawn logical
distinction has to be made, or an interlinked and
graduated course of reasoning, it betrays a certain
crude baldness which leaves much for the reader
to fill in by translating, as it were, into his own
more matured tongue. After the analogy of its
written characters it gives, so to say, the consonan
tal landmarks, to which from his rapport with the
inner sense the reader must add the articulating
vowels.

In two principal ways we have, in the study of
Koheleth' s thought, to reckon with this peculiar
limitation of the Hebrew language. For
one thing, it is somewhat put to it for SffTcStles
vocabulary ; a difficulty the more grave reckoned6
because in his time Koheleth is using a
language already to some degree archaic and deca
dent. Old words whose original sense was baldly
concrete have to be pressed into an abstract sig
nificance, or new terms and shadings have to be
coined out of homely metaphors. There are nu
merous traces of this peculiar kind of clumsiness :
one in the name Koheleth itself, which has called
forth reams of discussion ; another in the term
yithron, profit or surplusage, for the full scope of
which, as is shown above, we have to See
hold in solution Koheleth's whole body 20> 34>
of thought. Further examples could easily be

192 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

multiplied; as striking an instance as any, perhaps,
may be seen in the attempt in the Epilogue to

describe the kind of literary tissue that
io-if?6see Koheleth is trying here to employ, the

principle of thematic and coordinated
argument, as distinguished from the mashed, or
maxim. — A second thing, which exacts from the
interpreter a vigilance both penetrating and com
prehensive, is the poverty of the Hebrew language
in the matter of connectives, those necessary
instruments of fineness and flexibility. One con
junction — the omnipresent and of plain recount
ing — has to do duty for a variety of relations and
shadings; and what the value of the connected
clause is, whether additive or antithetic, inferential
or subordinate, can be accurately determined only
from the inside, only by knowing from the spirit
of the book and the man which way the current of
thought is flowing. I cannot better illustrate this,
perhaps, than by putting in parallel columns a
passage of Dr. Cox's version, in which he con
forms the words of connection to the theory that
the current in that place is negative, and the same
passage in my own, in which I regard the current
as positive ; from which parallel it can also be
seen in what radical sense translation must needs
be interpretation.

THE LITERARY SHAPING

193

DR. Cox's VERSION.

Therefore say I, though wis
dom is better than strength, yet
the wisdom of the poor is de
spised, and his words are not
listened to : though the quiet
words of the wise have much
advantage over the vocifera
tions of a fool of fools, and wis
dom is better than weapons of
war, yet one fool destroyeth
much good.

VERSION OF THIS BOOK.

And I said, Better is wis
dom than might, though the
wisdom of the poor man is de
spised, and his words are not
regarded. Words of the wise,
heard in quiet, are better than
the clamor of him that ruleth
among fools. Better is wisdom
than weapons of war, though
one sinner destroyeth much
good.1

If this comparison raises the disturbing query
whether the Hebrew text is thus so much of a wax
nose, to be pulled this way or that as the
critic wills, the only available answer is, tor as inter-"
that the critic's one resource is, in self*
effacing submission, to ascertain what is the will,
what the spirit, of the author, and let this control
his emphases, his vanishing-points, his unspoken
links of relation and connection. There is nothing
for it but this. His translator must be his inter
preter, and the interpretation must be identifica
tion of his halting germinal thoughts, according to
the spirit of them, with our more developed phi
losophies. The question of a conjunction, there
fore, or of a delicate adjustment of stress, is no

1 Survey vi. 25-34 (chapter ix. 16, 17). For convenience of
comparison I discard the parallelisms in which Dr. Cox has
arranged his translation.

194 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

idle matter; it may be far-reaching, sending us
back for its accurate solution to the central con
viction of all. That is why I have so insisted on
finding the all-commanding point of view ; that is
why, in my endeavor to make sure of this, I. have
begun so far back and laid the spiritual founda
tions so deep. If the tissue is homogeneous, the
power and thrust of every counsel, every judgment
of life, is determined more or less directly by all
the rest. And to keep track of this mutual rela
tion, to find the current and key of every part, is
to let Koheleth speak his mind.

Another source of difficulty to be reckoned with
is the fact that Koheleth is essaying a literary

procedure which is consciously an inno-
Dittlculties r J

due to Iran- Vation, a transition from the old and

sition irom

S%te^ familiar to the new and untried. This
may be described in large terms as the

transition from what the French call style coupe

to style soutenU) or as we have already noted,
from the mashal to the connected body

pages 176- of thought. The Epilogue says of his
literary method that he had three ways

of handling subject-matter: composing, compiling,

and arranging. Of these three, as new-
Epilogue, 5. , , . , ,
est and most to his large purpose, he

evidently set special store by the third ; it, with its
connotation of mutual support, was the means of

THE LITERARY SHAPING 195

converting a statement from a momentarily prick
ing goad to a nail well driven and clinched. He
threw himself, it would seem, with much Epllogue
zest, into the employment of this new 10'13-
working-tool. It is hardly to be expected, how
ever, that he should cut himself loose from the old
mashal form at once, especially as with the rest
he had store of compiled matter to dispose of ; nor
that he should at the first trial achieve perfect
workmanship in managing a body of continuous
thought. Some marks of the prentice hand, or of
imperfect joinery, would still be visible.

This presumption may be taken, I think, as a
fair explanation of some of Koheleth's peculiari
ties. It throws light, for one thing, on
his frequent employment of proverbial trationsof
sayings to point or clinch his argument.
Some of these fit as close as if they were composed
for the place, as we are ready to think they were ;
others, coming doubtless from a compi
lation, bear the marks of being brought i.eio,Uami7

note there,
in, sometimes veritably lugged m, from

outside, and these do not always escape the charge
of deflecting or obscuring the thought. An unus
ually flagrant case occurs at Survey iii. Survey
18, where see note. The Sixth Survey, ^ 18<
which is made up predominantly of aphorisms
prose and poetic, is, while not really out of the

196 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

general current, largely supplementary in charac
ter, reading much as if it had been appended to
the plan as a receptacle for an accumu
lation of material for which proper con
nection has not been apparent elsewhere. If this
is so, it is quite in line with Koheleth's avowed
workmanship, and serves rather to accentuate
than to impair his controlling sense of plan. — For
another thing, this transition hypothesis explains
a certain lack of artistic skill in the massing
of amplification natural to a beginner and not
unknown to the present day. The amplification,
especially if it includes a maxim, is sometimes
appended not to the main trend of the passage,
but to a subordinate or antithetic member, pro
ducing a superficial appearance of departure from
the line of thought. A notable example of this
occurs at Survey v. 53 ; another at vi.
v. 53; 31 ; both of which are explained in de
tail by the notes there. Such phenomena
as these, which are a commonplace to one accus
tomed to judge literature genetically, go far to
remove the warrant for attributing to Koheleth
a chaos of plan, as so many critics do. They are
the plainly recognizable slips of one whose art,
though ably meant, is not fully developed. Kohe
leth is a pioneer in this kind of literary craftsman
ship, as he is in his scientific temper and attack.

THE LITERARY SHAPING 197

VI

Of the style of the Book of Koheleth, the way
this sombre and sturdy thought got itself into
word and image, period and trenchant Some
line, not very much remains to be said. JSJuttiie
Here, as in the sequence of thought and - '^
plan, it will be found that the spirit, though strug
gling with a language grown somewhat decadent
and decrepit, has shaped itself, on the whole, an
adequate body of expression. There is an unusu
ally large proportion of knotty forms and con
structions; not, however, to any exceptional degree,
of the kind that yields to the spleeny clap-trap of
mutilated text, or stupid glosses, or misplaced leaves
of manuscript. With proper allowance made for
Koheleth's age and worn medium, there does not
seem to be enough motive left to go to any whole
sale extent into the swamps of this unsavory kind
of criticism. It may make individual critics con
fident of their fantastic conjectures — until the
next tinkerer kicks it all over ; but it does not
go far in making the book a clearer or solider or
more symmetrical thing to the reader for whom it
was meant. Our best guide, after all, is the sanity
which comprehends Koheleth the man, and which
begins the study not with the dead thing that
had been centuries done, but, so far as possible,

198 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

with the living word as it came warm from the
shaping soul.

The Book of Koheleth is essentially a prose
utterance, having the prose temper and the prose

work to do. It contains little, if any, of

/Koheleth . .

essentially a that lyric intensity which riots in nn-
prosebook. J . J

agery or impassioned eloquence. Rather

the matter-of-fact mood is in control ; its imagery
frankly illustrative, its eloquence subdued to prac
tical reasoning or counsel. The epigrammatic
ci page couplet of the older Wisdom literature
177, above. jgj as ^as been explained, no longer op
erative as the unit of style. That constant paral
lelism and return to which this form would com
mit the writer has been pretty well broken up in
the interests of continuity ; the occasional mashal
couplet being employed, much as we use poetical
quotation, to introduce clinching or illustrative
maxims for the most part compiled. Apart from
this the tissue is mainly that of a nervous, didactic
prose. In the Proem, to be sure, and here and
there throughout, the emotion rises to a grave
height, which might not unfitly be exhibited in
a quasi parallelism ; but it is so little over the
border of a prose which has become fully natural
ized among us, if indeed it goes beyond it at all,
that a prose form better represents it, suggesting
more lucidly as this does the style soutenu in

THE LITERARY SHAPING 199

which it is Koheleth's well-meant endeavor to
work.

Sometimes a vividly realizing imagi- The more
nation produces, without masJial aid, a
kind of word-picture ; as in

" The sun riseth also, and the sun goeth down,

3- 10

And cometh panting back to his place where he

riseth ; "

and sometimes the very quaintness of the antique
Hebrew, with its keen sense for word forms, is
charmingly poetic ; as in

" Going to the south, and circling to the north, — proem
Circling, circling, goeth the wind, 10-14.

And upon his circuits returneth the wind ; " ]

where the elaborate play on the words circling
and circuits, and the repetition of the inverted
sentence order, are relied upon for the imaginative
support. For such descriptive touches as these,
which are not rare, we do well to keep our eyes
open ; we shall find them motived, in each case,
by the spirit of the passage. These particular
examples occur, it will be observed, in the Proem,
where in a kind of austere eloquence Koheleth is
putting his kindled cosmic imagination into utter
ance. A similar rugged intensity occurs whenever
he faces the large elemental things, as for instance

1 I have put these passages into parallelistic form here, to
show more clearly their poetic affinity.

200 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

when he realizes what abysmal depths of wisdom
pervade the sum of being : —

" All this have I tried by wisdom ;
12-15. ' I said, Oh, let me be wise !

— And it was far from me.
Far off, that which is,
And deep, deep, — who shall find it ? "

To these examples may not unfitly be added,
though in more buoyant and flowing vein, that
kind of impetuous reveling in the details of man's
compensating lot which occurs at the solution

stages of the Surveys ; note this espe-
Surveylil. .5! /o

117-129 ;v. daily at the close ot feurveys in. and v.,

140-155. , J , %

where the exultant sense of conviction

and wealthy resource produces a degree of poetry.

In all this we have not yet taken into account

the notable enlargement, in sweep and
nating stage freedom, which comes over the thought

in the Sixth and Seventh Surveys, as
Koheleth approaches the summit, the final triumph,
so to say, of his body of counsel. I have classed
the book as essentially a prose utterance. So it
is, as long as Koheleth is dealing, like a strong
wrestler, with the enigmas of existence and the
ills of his time. As soon, however, as he has en-
Beginning of countered the last thwarting element of
Survey vi. time an(j chance, the gradual emancipa
tion of the more buoyant spirit reads like a pro-

THE LITERARY SHAPING 201

gressive change from weights to wings. Beginning
with the charming little parable of the Surveyvl.
poor wise man, it goes on first with a 16"34<
section of homely workday maxims, as if con
sciously launching into the long-repressed Survey vi.
current of venerable wisdom for which 3
it has so profoundly cleared the way; but for a
while the utterance of this wisdom is practical,
prudential, wisdom of the Poor Richard type. The
difference is very marked, however, when Survey vl
suddenly we come upon the peculiar 7
thought-rhyme of the Hebrew poetry, and are at
once aware of standing on a higher emotional
level : —

" Woe to thee, 0 land, whose king- is a boy !
And whose princes feast in the morning !
Blessed thou, 0 land, whose king is a son of nobles,
And whose princes feast at the fitting time,
In manly strength, and not in revelry."

From this point onward, until we come to the
more narrative spirit of the Epilogue, the text,
never reaching again the pedestrian tone of prose,
keeps to the more elevated level of the later poetic
mashal, gradually extending its range and beauty ;
until, in the culminating descriptions of Surveyvll>
young manhood and old age, which pas
sages ought not to be dissociated, even the most
liberally interpreted mashal fails to compass the

202 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

vision, and the expression flows into a luxuri
ance of Oriental imagery and detail. Better than
anything else except the opening exclamation, the
Book of Koheleth is known, to ordinary readers,
by the elaborately colored chapter on the decline
of the vital powers ; it is the acknowledged high-
water mark of poetic utterance. One is reminded
of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, wherein,
the utmost resources of orchestra proving inade
quate to his mighty musical conception, he must
needs supplement wood and strings and brass by
a chorus of living human voices. It is no longer a
Hebrew Wisdom couplet that we hear, but a ma
jestic tide of world poetry. And when we consider
what and how it culminates, we cannot call this
access of larger diction and rhythm adventitious.
It is like the melting of struggling discords into a
grave and solemn yet restful harmony. A native
prose utterance, dictated by the scientific temper
and spirit, has risen on wings of a vitalizing ima
gination into the finest spirit of poetry.

Let me not be read as if I were setting up the
claim of having discovered a flawless work of
The limits literary art. The book is still weighted
s turbid time-spirit, its unhandy

idiom, its pioneer task. Not even in its
own distinctive class can it be regarded as filling
out its type. Koheleth's theme is large, the largest,

THE LITERARY SHAPING 203

but we miss in him the majestic sweep of a Job
or an Isaiah. The night of legalism rests, as upon
his message, so upon his utterance. In this matter
of upsoaring imagination, for instance, his limita
tions are as evident as his range. We see this
especially when he confronts the mystery of world
and time in primal recognition of which his book
was written. It is, we may say, just the quality
of imagination, of insight scientific and creative,
which can take the next and most immediately
useful step, but has not yet burst bounds and
come out into the unhorizoned free. We feel this,
for one thing, in the way he holds his vision
sternly self-limited, to the verge of the perverse,
in his reaction against " dreams and vanities and
words many." His face so rigidly set against all
foregleams of futurity, we dimly feel, is not just
what an ardently constructive insight, ideally free
from prejudice, would take ; for the sake of the
more corrective truth, his imagination has put a
bridle on itself. We feel too, sometimes, how in
the very fulfillment of its huge world-task his
descriptive power sweats under its load; as if,
instead of painting the picture, he could only
bring the subject to the reader and bid him paint
his own : — "I saw all the living that Survey m
walk under the sun on the side of this 49-
youth, ... no end to all the people, to all over

204 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

whom he was." Several instances of such kind of
abortive description, where a modern pen would
riot in its opportunity, will strike the attentive
reader : the toil and the beauty, Survey ii. 23 ;
oppressions and tears, iii. 1 ; the tyrant's funeral
procession, v. 66 ; the world spread out, v. 114. Or
else, when a great stormy truth looms before him
out of the universe, the skill of selection fails
him, and he pours out a kind of untempered
Whitmanesque catalogue. We can see something
survey v. °^ what is here meant in the passage
27' where, in the intense realization of the
chaotic welter of the world, he reaches the nadir-
point of his agnosticism. As compared with the
deft modern touch, his rude imagination, struggling
toward vigorous portrayal, reminds one of Milton's
lion, " pawing to get free his hinder parts." All
this, of course, is not other than we have the
warrant to expect ; it is the stage of descriptive
art that belongs to his literary level.

If, however, his untutored imagination works
only in the absoluteness of primary colors, or is at
His power times well-nigh swamped in the chaos
>very' and wreckage of the world, another char
acteristic we have at hand to offset it, — his
eminently sane power of recovery. No abyss is
too deep for him to escape to firm ground. His
counsel, schooled to mastery in a more native He-

THE LITERARY SHAPING 205

brew genius, makes up by a kind of healthy good
sense for what his literary touch lacks in descrip
tive skill. Instances of this abound, it being the
distinguishing tone and virility of his book. A
good example of it follows the nadir-point just
mentioned. By a few lines of transition Koheleth
strides from that seeming abysmal gloom, wherein
" the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and
madness is in their hearts while they live, and after
that — to the dead," upward to the eminence
which, of all his words, marks his highest and
noblest. Nor is this latter attainment less solid
and permanent for leaving us, if not at the most
poetic, yet at the most serviceable attitude to
ward life. For this, directing the soul to a table
land of wisdom for his age and all ages, is his
unique distinction.

Four chapters ago we set out to study the liter
ary and spiritual values of this puzzling Book of

Koheleth. And now at the end of our

The literary

journey it remains only to say, we have
not studied two things but one. The
literary has its roots in the spiritual ; is range'
the spiritual moulded into words. We commune
with Koheleth's wholesome spirit, and the words
become lucid, the puzzles disappear. As the spirit
of a weary creation, burdened by law and made

200 THE INTRODUCTORY STUDY

subject to vanity, breathed upon him, so he spoke,
making the vast cosmic sigh his own. As the
dreamy spirit of a time roused him to sharp reac
tion and corrective counsel, so he spoke, endeavor
ing to recall his nation back to the seasoned wisdom
of many Hebrew generations. As the faint flush
of a new spiritual morning, heralded first by an
inner sense of need, began to kindle far behind
the untraveled hills, so he spoke, girding his wait
ing spirit, in the fear of God and the integrity of
manhood, to readiness for the approaching test
of hearts. And the words he spoke, as the spirit
of them is unbound, do not fail or lose their edge,
but grow more vital with the latest years. For
they ignore the deadness of convention, the bars
of caste, the clamors of sect, the refinements of
speculation, and speak for man as man.

II

WOEDS OF KOHBLETH

TRANSLATION AND RUNNING COMMENTARY

I have gone the whole round of creation : I saw and I spoke :
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain
And pronounced on the rest of his handwork — returned

him again

His creation's approval or censure : I spoke as I saw :
I report, as a man may of God's work."

BROWNING: Saul.

" 0 me ! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful ?
Or else as if the world were wholly fair,
But that these eyes of men are dense and dim,
And have not power to see it as it is —
Perchance, because we see not to the close."

TENNYSON : The Passing of Arthur.

THE OUTLINE

Proem, The Fact, and the Question, — Vanity being the
sequel of all that we see, what profit therefore to man ?
— The concession due to vanity ; in the return of
things on themselves ; in human unsatisf action ; in the
self-repeating cycles of time. (Chapter i. 2-11.)

The First Survey, An Induction of Life, — Koheleth's
experiments in life, and the sum-total of their result.
Wisdom, the outfit for the quest, subject, like all else,
to vanity. — I. The quest itself : carried out in plea
sure, art, luxury, wealth. Result of the experiment : its
success ; its failure ; and the residue it yielded. —
II. The final event, with its bewildering invasion of
man's work and plans. — III. The solution with God ;
whose approving response is revealed in wisdom and
knowledge and joy. (Chapter i. 12-ii. 26.)

The Second Survey, Times and Seasons, — The thesis
of the Survey. — I. How the most contrary things have
their season, wherein they are timely. — II. Man's
work also has its time ; but in it is a strain of eternity,
to give it depth and character. — III. A time likewise
for judgment, which in the present is veiled for educa
tive ends. — IV. The solution : to rejoice in one's own
works, as fitting to the seen present, not the problematic
future. (Chapter iii.)

The Third Survey, In a Crooked World, — I. Particu-

210 WORDS OF KOHELETH

lars of the Survey: 1. Cruelties of the upper hand
toward inferiors ; 2. Rivalries between equals, impair
ing, as also does indolent folly, the ideal of restful
activity ; 3. The ultimate logic of such exclusive self-
regard. — II. Better alternatives dictated by good
sense, as mitigation of various evils : 1. What is better
in the every-day relations of men ; 2. What is better
in the leadership of state ; 3. What is better in the
house of God ; 4. What is better in the plighted word
of man. — III. Offsets to the findings of the Survey :
1. In the machinery of the state ; 2. In the cares of
wealth ; 3. In the channels of gain. — IV. The solu
tion : the good and comely life of joy in work and in
the portion which God hath given. (Chapters iv., v.)

The Fourth Survey, Pate, and 'the Intrinsic Man, —
Concrete case occasioning the Survey : Possessions, and
no power to use them. — I. Evil of missing the good
of life. The hunger for what is more than meat. The
measure that fate has taken. — II. Better alternatives
that make for soul-building. — III. The solution :
Balanced sanity of mind, in utrumque paratus. (Chap
ter vi. 1-vii. 18.)

The Fifth Survey, Avails of Wisdom, — - The thesis of
the Survey. — I. The untoward side : Wisdom is not in
casual words ; is far to seek ; and debasable. — II. The
positive avails : Wisdom before the powers of judg
ment. Counsel to bow to the powers that be, even
though arbitrary ; waiting for the time when judgment
shall appear ; and when the balance shall be made
even. It is wisdom not to presume on delay of judg
ment ; but to hold to the sure law of good ; and to

THE OUTLINE 211

possess the soul in that good cheer which sweetens toil.

— III. Wisdom before the enigmas of destiny. Pre
sume not on the sameness of destiny as warrant for
unwisdom ; but make up life with reference rather to
life than to the impending death. — IV. The solution :
Life fully furnished and faithful to a divinely accepted
work. (Chapter vii. 19-ix. 10.)

The Sixth Survey, Wisdom Encountering Time and Chance.

— Discount for the thwarting element of time and
chance. — I. Wisdom as an unvalued power working
under the surface of things. — II. Prose aphorisms of
wisdom's words and works. — III. Poetic aphorisms
of wisdom as sanity and prudence in affairs. — IV.
The solution : Work, like the husbandman's, in that
faith which takes all chances. (Chapter ix. 11-xi. 6.)

The Seventh Survey, Bejoice, and Eemember, — The
whole counsel proposed. — I. Joy and the forward look
for young manhood. — II. Memory to temper joy,
while yet the days are fair. (Chapter xi. 7-xii. 7.)

Epilogue, The Nail Fastened, — The concession of van
ity holds as ever. Koheleth's ideal of instruction and
authorship. The end of the matter : the soul's station
at the centre of manhood, ready for judgment. (Chap
ter xii. 8-14.)

THE STRUCTURAL IDEA

FROM its initial note of vanity to its final leave-taking of
earth, the whole Book of Koheleth is conceived in one
supreme idea, one homogeneous conviction. What this is
let these few words endeavor to summarize : —

LIFE IS AN ULTIMATE FACT. IT HAS
NO EQUIVALENT ; IT WILL ACCEPT NO
SUBSTITUTE. IN WHATEVER ALLOTMENT
OF WORK AND WAGE, IN WHATEVER EX
PERIENCE OF EASE OR HARDSHIP, IN
WHATEVER SEEN OR UNSEEN RANGE OF
BEING; LIFE, UTTERLY REFUSING TO BE
MEASURED BY ANYTHING ELSE, MUST
BE ITS OWN REWARD AND BLESSEDNESS,
OR NOTHING.

WOEDS OF KOHELETH

SON OF DAVID, KING IN JERUSALEM

PROEM
THE FACT, AND THE QUESTION

VANITY of vanities, saith Kobe- vanity
being the
leth, vanity of vanities, — all sequel oi ail

that we see

vanity. What profit hath man, in all JSJiSSlJ
his labor, which he laboreth under the man?
sun ? 5

CHAP. i. 2, 3.

For verse 1, here printed as the heading of the whole
book, and for the names and titles it contains, see the In
troductory Study, pp. 169-174.

This Proem, beginning with a sweeping statement, or
rather exclamation, of the cosmic fact, vanity, appends the
question, "What profit to man?" — a question which at
first thought seems, by the very universality of the fact,
to be closed to any but a negative answer ; but when re
peated, in Survey ii. 1. 21, contains a much more hopeful
implication; see Introductory Study, p. 74. The remainder
of the Proem, 11. 6-31, illustrates, in a series of broad speci
fications drawn from nature and the world of man, in what
sense all is subject to vanity ; this, not so much to prove
the fact as to give its significance and range. Vanity is fully

214 WORDS OF KOHELETH PR.

The conces- GENERATION goeth, and generation

vanity: cometh, while for ever the earth

CHAP. i. 4.

and freely conceded, however hopeless the concession leaves
the world ; no skeptic or pessimist can go beyond Koheleth
in this honesty to what, from his point of view, is to be ob
served.

LINE 1. The word translated vanity means breath, vapor.
It is the same word that, as a proper name, was given to Abel,
the first man who died ; Genesis iv. 2. The word is redu
plicated, in Hebrew idiom, for absoluteness of emphasis; as
if the author had said, " Breath, — nothing but breath."
It is Koheleth's pronouncement on the " gross and scope " of
life, more particularly life as revealed in environment and
ns responding thereto. Life " under the sun," that is, the
phenomenal, material, earthly life, is what he is thinking
of ; and so far as any visible data for judgment go, it seems
to amount merely to the breath used up in the living of it.
How universally this applies is left for the various specifica
tions that follow, as successive aspects of life come into view.

3. What profit hath man ? This question, as a kind of ob
verse, follows naturally on the exclamation of vanity, — as
much as to say, Since all is vanity, what profit ? the first
implication being negative and challenging, — no profit at
all. See Introductory Study, p. 68. This sense of the ques
tion is just commensurate with the sense in which vanity is
asserted, applying to the same earthly sphere. If we could
get a glimpse of a higher sphere, beyond or within, the
question might not seem so absolutely to negative profit ;
and this is in fact what comes to light in Survey ii. 21,
where the question reads as if an answer were near. — The
word translated profit — meaning basally surplusage, resi
duum, what is left over — is, rather than the word vanity,

PR. THE FACT, AND THE QUESTION 215

abideth. The sun riseth also, and the in the return

oi things
sun goeth down, and cometh panting

CHAP. i. 5.

the controlling term of Koheleth's thought; he is concerned,
whether negatively or interrogatively, with the question of
profit, rather than trying to make all issue finally in vanity.
The idea of profit is used in a pregnant, expansible applica
tion. It begins as the plain commercial term denoting the
wage or reward which, as the thing of final and supreme
value, the laborer seeks beyond the work itself ; it is the
thing which the work exists to produce. In this every-day
application the question is of negative suggestion. But the
cosmic setting in which the question here appears creates
a broader field of application ; making it mean, What sur
plusage, what overflow of energy or vitality, in life as we
see it and live it, what is there left over when it is done ?
In this application the question, while still weighted with
Koheleth's agnosticism regarding future things, suggests,
as above indicated, some beginnings of an answer, as if
Koheleth would point out the true source of profit. — In
all his labor • this takes man on what is most nearly the
universal plane. Man is a laboring being ; and the most
salient fact about the mass of human life, as Koheleth
looks out over it and interrogates it, is labor. As first looked
upon, with its involvements of hardship, necessity, routine,
drudgery, it is a depressing sight, and the more so as there
seems to be no surplusage, no way by which it adds to the
sum of things. But labor, as an element of life, will not
miss a nobler recognition later ; like the idea of profit, it
has a part to play in Koheleth's philosophy, which his
doubting question does not reveal at the outset.

6-31. The rest of the Proem is taken up with a specifica
tion of facts, drawn from the phenomenal world of nature

216 WORDS OF KOHELETH PR.

on them- 10 back to his place where he riseth. Go
ing to the south, and circling to the

CHAP. i. 6.

and history, to illustrate the assertion that all is vanity,
by showing on the cosmic scale how surplusage is lacking.
In general it is the conception of the return of things on
themselves; as if all world-processes had merely a circuit
to traverse and begin again, with nothing left over to mark
progress. It reminds one of the Hindoo's wheel of destiny,
applied, however, not to the transmigration of souls but to
the law-governed order of the universe. For the scientific
and evolutionary parallel to this, see Introductory Study,
pp, 27 sqq.

6. Generation goeth, etc. The point of this fact seems to
be that, while the successive generations are always in
change, yet they are so alike, so much an endless repetition
of the same routine of life, that they reveal no progress
from age to age; a fact which the permanence of the earth
only accentuates.

7. While for ever; the contrast of the permanence of the
•earth to the transitoriness of the generations is not the point
in emphasis; hence the guarded translation with the mild con
nective while, and the unprominent place given to for ever.

8. The sun riseth also; of the lordliest object in nature the
same self-repeating round is observable ; nothing apparently
gained.

9. Cometh panting back, literally, panteth back; as if it
had just breath enough to mount the height whence it can
make a new start. The verb seems to express not haste but
difficulty; and this conforms to the key of ideas in which
all is regarded as breath, in a universe with just energy
enough to keep itself running, and with no surplus.

10. Going to the south, etc. It seemed best, at the risk of

PR. THE FACT, AND THE QUESTION 217

north, — circling, circling, goeth the
wind, and upon his circuits returneth
the wind. All streams flow unto the
sea, yet is the sea not full : to the place is
whence the streams go forth, thither
they return. All things are labor-

CHAP. i. 6-8.

over quaintness, to preserve the na'iveU of this verse by
translating it with rigid literalness, in meaning and order, and
with a similar word-play in the words circling and circuits.
The mysterious wind, the breath of the world as it were,
shares in the same gyrating round as the rest. As one of
the illustrations, the wind is perhaps chosen as the freest
force in nature, to show how even that is enslaved to a
routine. It is worth while to contrast with this use of it the
employment of it in John iii. 8 to illustrate the self -directive
freedom of the spiritual life.

14. All streams, etc. Whether Koheleth had in mind the
phenomenon of cloud formation by evaporation from the
sea, and the subsequent precipitation of rain, is doubtful;
but the effort so to describe the fact as to bring it into the
line of illustration with the others produces at least a strik
ing coincidence with our modern account of it.

17. All things are labor-weary; the original word denotes
the weariness that comes from effort and labor, hence the
compound adjective. What is noted in man, 11. 3, 4, is
ascribed here to the universe ; man is by no means alone
in his labor. Labor, and the exhaustion attendant on it, is
a world fact; compare what is said of the sun, 1. 8. — To
translate things is more in accordance with the large sense
of the passage, and a very common secondary meaning of
the word (dabar) ; though in its primary meaning words (all

218 WORDS OF KOHELETH PR.

in human weary ; no man can describe it. Eve

unsatisf ac
tion; is not satisfied with seeing, nor ear

20 filled with hearing. What hath been,
that is what will be ; and what hath
been wrought, that is what will be
wrought ; and there is nothing new
under the sun. Is there aught whereof

25 it is said, " See this is new," - —long

CHAP. i. 8-10.

words are futile), it would make a natural, albeit narrow
sense with the next clause. With the present translation the
next clause expresses vividly Koheleth's sense of wonder
and sadness as his imagination takes in the great weary
world.

18. Eye is not satisfied, etc. An illustration introducing a
mystery that several times occurs subsequently; see es
pecially Survey iv. 6, 23; an illustration of the fact that
man cannot get, in property or in enjoyment, enough through
the senses to still his craving and be his final residuum of
profit. It seems to recognize in man a nature too great for
the dimensions of his environment; and thus it hints at
what afterwards, through several intermediate suggestions,
takes form in the idea of " eternity in the heart," Survey
ii. 26.

20. What hath been, etc. The salient truth of the Proem,
that things return on themselves, is asserted here of human
history, as earlier it was asserted of nature. The same
thought is repeated and enlarged upon, Survey iv. 28-32;
and in connection with it is again asked the question,
41 What profit ? " The point of the verse is the same lack
of surplusage.

PR. THE FACT, AND THE QUESTION 219
ago it was, in the ages that were be- in the

sell -repeat -

fore us. There is no remembrance of £& c?clos Ol

time.

them that were of former time ; and
of them that are to come will there
be no remembrance, among them that so
are to be thereafter.

CHAP. i. 10, 11.

27. Great names and small, give them merely time, melt
into oblivion, as it has been, so it will be. This thought is
repeated, Survey i. 85, in connection with the view of death
and its leveling effect; wherein the fool is seen to have at
his mercy, to waste and annul, all that the wise man has
accumulated.

Thus the Proem, having touched one by one on the vital
ideas of the book, ends; leaving us with the thought that,
as in man's common activities, so in the great world of na
ture and history, there is no discernible surplusage of pro
gress, of wisdom, of fame, to pay for all this outlay of labor.
That is the large significance that the initial assertion of
vanity takes. All that is outside of us can be measured by
time and space measurements, and its range and limits can
be known. There is no use, then, in looking there for the
residuum. It must be found, if found at all, elsewhere. It
will be the business of the coming sections, or Surveys, by
an inductive process, not only to particularize what is here
given compendiously, but also to bring into view whatever
alleviating or compensating features of life there are, to
make as it were a modus vivendi in a world of vanity. The
utmost concession is made, the utmost negative; now for
the positive alleviation to set over against it and make it
bearable.

THE FIRST SURVEY

AN INDUCTION OF LIFE

xoheieth's T KOHELETH, was king over Is-

experlments T .. AIT

in life, and rael in J erusalem. And 1 crave

the sum- °

result01 thelr my heart *° expl°re and survey by

CHAP. i. 12, 13.

What the Proem has asserted in general terms Koheleth
now proceeds to substantiate by an appeal to concrete ex
perience. To this end he assumes the position and character
of Solomon, the Hebrew type both of boundless riches and
of wisdom ; these resources are alike needed to make his
assertion absolute and universal. If it be objected here that
this assumption of character connotes an assumed or manu
factured experience, and thus not conclusive as to actual
fact, it may be answered that he is not proving vanity by
historic fact, — for this could have established only its one
case of vanity, — but emphasizing a truth that none can
gainsay by putting it in its most typical and absolute state
ment. If it is true in the ideally extreme case, it is true
for all.

LINE 1. While by the description the writer identifies
himself with King Solomon, yet the name itself, Koheleth,
being an assumed or symbolic one, reveals the fact that this
identification is made for its literary suggestiveness ; see
the Introductory Study, p. 172. — Was king • this past
tense would not have been used by the real Solomon ; the

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 221

wisdom concerning all that is wrought
under the heavens ; this, a sad toil, 5

CHAP. i. 13.

historic assumption is in fact too transparent to indicate
any attempt to deceive.

3. To explore and survey ; the two nearly synonymous
words refer to investigation made both intensively and
extensively, — seeking both the depth and the breadth of
things. — By wisdom ; wisdom is his outfit, his working-
tool; and this book ranks with Proverbs, Job, and others,
as a book of Wisdom. Wisdom may be regarded as, in the
large sense, an intermediary, the connecting link between the
pure religious consciousness on the one hand and the purely
worldly on the other. Taking goodness, it says it is wise,
practicable, workable ; taking wickedness, it says it is fatu
ous, ruinous, in the long run unpractical. Thus Wisdom is
an educator, leading stupid and bewildered man up to the
eminence of life from which he can see his way aright.
Koheleth applies it to details, and especially to difficulties ;
Wisdom does not see to the end, and scorns making up life
with reference to something else which is not yet ; but it
directs man whose attitude is work toward the issues of
every day and here, and toward the making of a sane, calm,
joyful soul.

5. This, a sad toil ; this very exploring by wisdom, out
side of the welter of toil as it seems, is so intense that it
takes its place in the sphere of labor ; it becomes a kind of
obsession, an inner necessity, which mocks at rest and ease.
One is reminded of Milton's scholar, who " scorns delights
and lives laborious days," and of the Grammarian's Funeral
of Browning. This toil beyond the need of earth, toil at
once imposed by God and loved for its own sake, is one of
the mysteries of human nature with which a wise observa-

222 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

hath God given to the sons of men
to toil therewith. I have seen all
the works that are wrought under the
sun, and behold — all vanity and a
10 chase after wind. The crooked can
not be straightened, and the lacking
cannot be numbered.

CHAP. i. 13-15.

tion must reckon ; it has its noble part to play in Kohe-
leth's interpretation of life.

7. All the works; a general sum-total, which succeeding
specifications will reduce to detail : the works of skill,
wealth, art, in the present Survey, the crooked and myste
rious in succeeding sections.

9. All vanity, as it were so much using up of breath ; and
a chase after wind, you can no more overtake any real profit
or surviving substance than you can catch the wind. Not
in his works " under the sun " is the surplusage and reward;
whether it can be found elsewhere is yet to be seen.

10. The crooked cannot be straightened, etc. An instance of
the numerous aphorisms which are put in, generally at sum
ming-up points, to clinch the thought. These, it would seem,
were inserted by the writer, as he went along, from his col
lection; see Epilogue, 1. 5. Sometimes these aphorisms
seem to have been composed to fit the occasion, sometimes,
as coming from a compilation, they bear the marks of in
sertion from outside, in the fact that they deviate a little
from the direct line of the thought in hand. A bit of that
quality clings to the present one, which introduces, as sug
gested by the futile chase, its implication of the irremedia
ble a little prematurely.

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 223

I communed with my heart, saying,
"Lo, I have increased and accumu-
lated wisdom above all that have been 15
before me over Jerusalem, and abun
dantly hath my heart seen wisdom
and knowledge." And I gave my
heart to know wisdom, and to know
madness and folly. I perceived that 20
this also is a grasping after wind.

CHAP. i. 16, 17.

14. "Lo, I have increased ;" the traditional Solomon,
speaking of what history has ascribed to him. He, if any
one, has the resources to prosecute the search after true
profit ; in him preeminently, if in any one, can be seen how
much wisdom and knowledge can avail.

19. And to know madness and folly ; the " largeness of
heart " (1 Kings iv. 29) ascribed to King Solomon is here
assumed ; Koheleth is ready to explore folly as well as
wisdom. Instead of taking current estimates for granted,
he will see for himself ; this is the inductive, as it were the
scientific spirit, expressing itself in hospitality to anything
that has promise, and in resolve to see things as they are.
It is this appeal from hearsay or convention to fact which
makes the present Survey an induction of life. The first
induction from this is drawn, 1. 69 sq.

21. This also, etc. Even wisdom, as a mere possession or
accumulation, shares in the limitations of other possessions ;
property in knowledge is like property in everything else. —
A grasping after wind ; not the same word as the one trans
lated chase above, 1. 10. — In Job's account of Wisdom
and of the search for it, Job xxviii. 3, there is a hint of its

224 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

subject, like For ill much wisdom is much sorrow,
all else, to

vanity. and he that increaseth knowledge in

crease^ heartache.

I

25 I SAID in my heart, " Come now,
let me try thee with pleasure, and see

CHAP. i. IS-ii. 1.

limits : "man setteth an end to darkness," he goes a good
way, like the miner, and light illumines his way so far, but
there is after all a dark region beyond. Koheleth begins
by acknowledging this ; and later he reiterates the limita
tions of wisdom with increased emphasis, Survey v. 12-15 ;
compare also 1. 83, and note. To acknowledge the limits
of wisdom is a part of that honesty to facts which will not
assume beyond knowledge.

22. For in much wisdom, etc. Another aphorism, either
from his collection or composed for the thought, which it
eminently fits. The element of sympathy, which lives itself
into the things it sees, and takes not only the knowledge
but the burden of them, is finely expressed here, and it is
a prominent trait of Koheleth's study of life. His is not
cold-hearted scientific analysis ; when he "gives his heart "
(see 1. 2), there is a depth on the sympathetic side which
makes us slow to attenuate the phrase into gives his mind ;
the wisdom has enlisted feeling with intellect.

With 1. 25 begins the account of the quest itself ; he has
hitherto described the outfit for it at some length, because
in fact it is the introduction to the inductive investigation
of the whole book.

26. Try thee with pleasure ; the pursuit which lies nearest
at hand and has the first promise. If the good of life is to

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 225

thou good." And behold this too was The quest

itsell: car-
vanity. To laughter I said, " Thou

mad ! " and to pleasure, " What do-
eth this ? " I sought in my heart to 30
cheer my flesh with wine, my heart
guiding by wisdom ; also to lay hold

CHAP. n. 1-3.

be found anywhere, surely laughter and pleasure have most
the appearance of containing it.

27, 28. But according to the promise of the first look is
the promptness of the disillusion and disgust. Laughter and
pleasure prove a hollow mockery. The expression of this is
intensified by his turning, in the case of the latter, from the
direct to the third-person address, — " What doeth this ? "
— as if he could hardly bear near enough relation to com
mune with it.

30. To cheer my flesh ; literally to draw out, that is per
haps drive or exhilarate. Wine is the factitious means of
imparting cheer from outside, the coarse and mechanical
way, so to say, and so most palpable, of reaching the mood
through the flesh. For the contrasted spiritual means, com
pare Ephesians v. 18.

31. My heart guiding by wisdom • this is a condition
cardinal to Koheleth's whole inquiry ; wisdom, the highest
and best that is in a man, must have the control in a quest
so momentous. In this respect his exploration of life
contrasts with the conduct of those who become immersed
and imbruted in wine ; which latter gives the flesh, not
the heart, the control. Koheleth will go into anything only
so far as he can take wisdom along with him.

32. Also to lay hold • a strong verb, — as if he were re
solved, regardless of hearsay or convention, to ascertain

226 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

on folly ; — until I should see what

is the good thing for the sons of men

35 to do under the heavens, all the days

of their life.

art, luxury, I made me great works ; I builded

me houses ; I planted me vineyards ;

CHAP. ii. 3, 4.

for himself the utmost that folly could do, in its poten
tiality for or against true living.

33. On folly ; it is a mark of his scientific spirit thus
freely to open the question and hear all sides.

34. The good thing • what philosophers call the summum
bonum, the supreme good. Koheleth's test of this, or at
least the quality here sought, is its permanence ; it must
avail men " all the days of their life." In other words, his
quest is for the absolute, intrinsic values, those values which
are unaffected by fluctuations of time and circumstance.
Many things there are which afford a temporary appease
ment or diversion, but the blight of transitoriness and vanity
is on them all, and the fact that the heart outgrows them, or
is left hungering, is evidence that they are not its true ele
ment. — The result of his laying hold on folly is postponed
until he can report it as contrasted to his use of wisdom ;
see 1. 73.

37. Great works ; from idle pleasure and the stimulus of
wine he turns toward something which, in the doing of it,
calls into requisition more of his inner nature and powers.
The works here described are such as would best answer to
a Hebrew's esthetic ideals of life, all that bent which finds
expression in art and in the gratification of tastes and the
finer desires. It is thus, we may say, that a Hebrew would
feed his ideal of a full-furnished life, if he had at command

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 227

I made me gardens and parks ; and
planted in them fruit trees of every 40
kind ; I made me pools of water, to
water therefrom the tree-bearing for
est. I procured men-servants and
maids, and had servants born in the

CHAP. n. 5-7.

all the resources of a Solomon. We may indeed go a step
further. If the Oriental were set to imagine a heaven, this
would very nearly answer to it, as indeed it does to the Mo
hammedan paradise. One is tempted to think, therefore,
that Koheleth is here depicting the dream that is taking
possession of his age. In connection with the wave of specu
lation on immortality which Greek influences have induced,
men are creating heavens, and this is about what it is in
them to create. It is neither a moral ideal nor an ideal of
disinterested love, it is an ideal of enjoyment and self-in
dulgence. In depicting it Koheleth is holding the mirror
up to his age by describing what, if left to the free play
of tendency, the manhood of the time would best like ;
and thus instead of postponing the realization of ideal to
another world, or feeding a philosophic fancy upon it, he
subjects it to the facts of human nature, by relating what
actually follows here and now when an ideal of this sort
is realized. By its success or failure here may be judged
what it would be in any state or time.

All this splendor is pretty accurately what a man unac
quainted with Solomon except by tradition, and unversed
in royal affairs except by imagination and hearsay, would
describe.

42. The tree-bearing forest; that is, a nursery, where
young trees are reared for transplantation.

228 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

45 house ; also great possessions of herds
and flocks were mine, above all that
had been before me in Jerusalem. I
amassed for myself also silver and
gold, and the choice treasures of kings

so and of the provinces ; I got me men-
singers and women-singers, and the
voluptuous delights of the sons of
men, mistresses many.

Result oi the And I became great, and increased

experiment :

its success, 55 beyond all that had been before me

in Jerusalem ; moreover, my wisdom
CHAP. ii. 7-9.

53. Mistresses many ; the words thus translated are very
obscure, but this seems most probably what is meant. This
detail may be regarded as the last term in a sensual ideal
of life not unlike what is expressed in Mohammedanism
to-day ; see Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day,
pp. 239, 240.

54. And I became great; in the Hebrew idea, to be great
and to be rich were synonymous ; compare Job i. 3. —
This is the first result of Koheleth's quest ; he gets what
he gives his heart to, and in this respect his search for good
is eminently successful. If it fails to satisfy, the cause is
not in its lack but in the soul which trusted to find satisfac
tion therein.

55. Beyond all, etc. This comparison with predecessors
is not quite as the historical King Solomon would have
described himself ; as king he was only the second who had
been monarch in Jerusalem.

56. My wisdom stood by me; this is the outfit with

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 229

stood by me. And nothing that mine
eyes craved did I withhold from them.
I kept not my heart back from any
joy ; for my heart derived joy from eo

CHAP. n. 10.

which he began his survey and trial of life ; see 1. 3, and
note ; to cherish his wisdom is also the tacit condition with
which he plunges into worldly dissipations and pleasures,
see 1. 31. And whatever fails, this, the capital stock, so to
say, which he has just put into the business, this stays by
him, a permanent asset. He has not, like the roue* and
debauchee, so recklessly buried himself in pleasure and
worldliness as to have surrendered to environment the con
trol of himself ; he governs still, and governs by wisdom,
not it. He is still therefore in condition to judge accurately
the values and the deficits of life.

57. Nothing . . . did I withhold ; Koheleth's ideal of life
therefore is not asceticism, and if he seems later to speak for
a more austere conception, it is not from ignorance of the
contrasted resources. He has sounded the depths and shoals
of worldly pleasure, has been diligent to hear all sides.

59. From any joy ; the free play of the joyous, healthy
faculties of life. Koheleth concedes, in spite of the pessi
mistic and agnostic elements of his view, that joy is normal,
and that the cultivation of enjoyment in such way that wis
dom still stands by him is not a thing to be despised or
decried. This concession he seems to be making as a kind
of offset to the reactionary and perhaps old fogy position
he has taken in relation to the thinking and sentiment of
his time ; see Introductory Study, p. 47.

60. Derived joy from all my labor ; the joy comes, it is to
be noted, from the labor, not from the eventualized results

230 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

all my labor ; and this was my por
tion from all my labor.

its failure; And I turned toward all my works,

which my hands had wrought, and

es toward the labor which I had labored

CHAP. ii. 10, 11.

of it, or from the reward that he gets for it. This he records
here as a fact in his induction ; but later he makes this the
pivotal idea of his thought ; there is nothing better, he
repeatedly says, than to rejoice in one's labor. " The main
satisfaction of life," said President Eliot to the newsboys,
" after the domestic joys, is the accomplishment of some
thing. Perhaps you think the satisfaction is in having done
it ? No ; it is in doing it."

61. This was my portion ; what he here records as his own
portion, proved such by actual experience, he later asserts
as every man's portion, as that which is most central in
human life ; see ii. 69. Much is made throughout the book
of man's portion ; see ii. 69 ; iii. 122 ; v. 149 ; it is regarded
as that which, independently of time, place, or circum
stance, is most the man's own.

63. Turned toward all my works • the works themselves,
the buildings, the parks, the treasures, the luxuries, afforded
no ]°y > as soon as the creative zest was removed from
them, and they stood there externalized, extrinsic, they
were but vanity ; they added nothing of surplusage to his
soul's upbuilding.

64. And toward the labor ; nor was the labor itself, from
the doing of which he had derived joy, a source of profit
considered as something to be paid for or rewarded by
something exterior to itself. It did not, as labor, add to the
assets of life.

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 231

to do ; and behold — all vanity and a
chase after wind ; and no profit under
the sun.

And I turned to look at wisdom and the

residue It
and madness and folly ; — for what 70 yielded.

doeth the man who cometh after the

CHAP. n. 11, 12.

67. No profit under the sun ; see Proem, 1. 3, note.

69. Turned to look; having assessed the external re
sources of life, its wealth and art and luxury, Koheleth
turns to judge the inner outfit ; wisdom and madness and
folly are, so to say, candidates for the direction and control
of life. It will be remembered that he opened the question
of madness and folly along with that of wisdom (see 1. 19,
and note), in order to test these anew and leave nothing to
hearsay or convention, nothing untried that promises any
result.

70. Madness, as distinguished from folly, seems to refer to
that enthusiastic, exalted, frenzied state of mind which in
Eastern countries is associated with prophetic utterance,
and which accordingly is much heeded as a source of coun
sel and guidance. The contrast, then, is between the calm,
level head of wisdom, as a guide of life, and the occasional
exalted state of madness ; and it is perhaps significant that
in the comparison madness sinks out of the account en
tirely, as no longer in competition. Koheleth's pronounce
ment is rather for the calmer, more judicial mood, the wise
attitude which weighs all sides. — Folly is so often resorted
to by the thoughtless that it cannot well be left out of ac
count as a candidate for the guidance of life ; and indeed
it has alluring aspects.

70. For what doeth the man, etc. The implication of this

232 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

king, — him whom they made king
so long ago? And I saw that there
is superiority of wisdom over folly,

CHAP. H. 12, 13.

abrupt question seems to be that Koheleth is the fitting one
to balance up the values of life, for if he, the king, cannot
pass true judgment, no successor, no humbler or poorer man,
can. A responsibility rests on him to give the world a true
assessment of things.

72. Whom they made king so long ago. An obscure pas
sage, of which this seems on the whole the clearest sense.
Koheleth thus identifies the king from whom such judgment
of wisdom and folly is expected with the king whose historic
renown for wisdom and riches puts him in the best position
for judging. The reference to a historic king reminds one
of Tennyson's reference to Arthur ; Idylls of the King, Epi
logue : —

" that gray king, whose name, a ghost,
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still."

Koheleth, in so speaking of Solomon, either momentarily
forgets that he is posing himself as Solomon, or, what is
more likely, takes this furtive way of hinting that his
assumption of the Solomon role is after all only an assump
tion.

74. Superiority of wisdom ; the word translated superi
ority is the word ^"VTS profit, or surplusage ; it names the

very thing after which, as he looks over the world, Ko
heleth is supremely seeking. He asked, " What profit ? "
(Proem, 1. 3) ; he has failed to find it in external things
(1. 67 above) ; and now, in a comparative sense, he has
found a profit, an inner surplusage, in wisdom. Wisdom is

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 233

like the superiority of light over dark- 75
ness. As for the wise man, his eyes
are in his head ; but the fool walketh
in darkness.

II

YET I know that one event befalleth The iinai
them all. And I said in my heart, so

CHAP. n. 14, 15.

a profit as compared with folly, as far superior as light is
to darkness, for it is an illumination of life ; its possessor
is a seeing man, not a groping blind one.

76. As for the wise man, etc. Another adage from Kohe-
leth's store, brought in here to sum up the thought. It
describes very well the spirit in which Koheleth made such
wholesale trial of life's resources, dangers included, as con
trasted with the heedless stupidity of the fool, who lets the
evil risks of life overwhelm him ; compare 1. 56, note.

79. Yet I know, etc. The contrast here suggested — the
polar opposite of wisdom and folly in their potencies for
life, yet the absolute oneness of event when all is over —
is so natural that in our translation, as well as in the Maso-
retic text, the clause is put merely as the afterthought of
the verse ; but so great a transition of thought grows from
it that it merits being set off by a section numeral as
here.

Wisdom, the highest that he has found under the sun,
the first thing to possess an element of intrinsic profit, is
all at once confronted with the universal event of death,
which reveals such an absolute leveling of conditions that
no grades or varieties in human character avail against
it. The fact seems to bring all Koheleth's discoveries to

234 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

with its " As is the destiny of the fool, so also

invasion of shall it befall even me ; — why, then,
man's work J '

and plans. am I wise beyond the demand?"

CHAP. n. 15.

a standstill on the threshold of his quest of life ; it is the
thing that disturbs him most, and presses from him his bit
terest words ; compare ii. 58 ; v. 123. To face this universal
event in all its rigor, blinking no aspect of it, and to main
tain an undaunted life before it, is the supreme achievement
of Koheleth's book.

83. Wise beyond the demand; so I venture to render
*^rP f^» which uses still the same idea expressed by profit,
surplusage. It refers to wisdom beyond what is needed to
get through this earthly life. If death reduces all eventu
ally to one level, then in being wise he is overcapitalizing
his life, laying out a superfluity of endowment as compared
with the returns. He could attain the same end and be a
fool, and so could save all the trouble and sorrow that wis
dom confessedly costs him ; compare 11. 5, 21, and notes.
Why, then, is he taking all the pains to be wise and deep-
seeing and foreseeing, if all the profit of it is so temporary,
annulled by death ? It is the inevitable question of thinkers
and poets in the leveling presence of mortality. Tennyson
draws its conclusion well : —

44 'T were hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A little patience ere I die," —

if death were seen as death absolute.

Yet Koheleth's question, " Why, then, am I wise beyond
the demand ? " does not wholly dismiss the subject. The
existence of this superfluity of endowment is to be reckoned
with. Wisdom beyond the demand is a malady, an obsession

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 235

And in my heart I said that this too
is vanity. For alike of the wise and ss
of the fool is there no remembrance
for ever ; because that already in the
days to come all will have been for-

CHAP. n. 15, 16.

of man ; compare 1. 5, and note. It makes him too large
for his environment, just as eternity in the heart (see ii. 27)
makes him too large for the world of time ; it is a super
fluity of asset which lives, in Browning's phrase, " referring
to some state of life unknown," see Introductory Study,
p. 73. This state of life unknown, however, is just what
Koheleth has not yet the clear insight to see ; it is yet to
be revealed. He has, so to say, the eyes without the vision.
This is the pathos of his lot, and of his book. Yet on
the other hand, this and other surplusages of life are the
things that, item by item, he so sets over against the empty
speculations on futurity of his day that in the final sum-
total they outbalance them, making life the potency of
victory instead of a failure ; see Introductory Study, pp.
71 sqq.

84. And in my heart I said. A series of sentences be
ginning here, — see also 11. 91, 94, 103, — put in the past
tense, record Koheleth's first conclusion, describing the first
or phenomenal indication of things, which may or may not
correspond to his final summing up. True as his present
observations are from the given data, as a matter of fact
they are eventually answered by compensating things far
deeper in nature.

86. No remembrance for ever ; an application to the spe
cific case of wise and fool of what has already been affirmed
of all, Proem, 1. 27.

236 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

gotten. And oh ! how is it that the
90 wise man dieth just like the fool ?

And I hated life ; for evil to me

was the work that is wrought under

the sun ; for all is vanity and a chase

after wind. And I hated all my labor

95 which I had labored under the sun ;

CHAP. ii. 16-18.

89. And oh ! how is it, etc. Koheleth's most poignant re
flection, as touching the future, relates not to the survival of
the soul or the consciousness, as with us, but to the survival
of wisdom ; it is a thing too valuable to die, it seems made
for some other destiny. Besides, being the only thing he
has discovered with an element of profit or surplusage, its
extinction seems to close the prospect for immortality ; this
is really his deepest cause of dismay, because his approach
to the idea of immortality, as it proceeds by the thought
of surplusage or overflow of life, seems here to receive its
severest check.

91. And I hated life ; the first result of this leveling ca
tastrophe is to take the apparent value out of life. All its
achievements and accumulations, gained with so much toil,
must be dissipated, or at least must take the risk of being
brought to nothing by fools. It is to this that the significance
of life, even its highest endowment of wisdom, is brought
when we reckon up its net proceeds this side of the grave.
Only a question of time it is, when all that can be weighed
or measured or valued outside of the soul shall pass away.

94. All my labor • a reminiscence of his kingly enter
prises, 11. 37 sqq., and perhaps, too, a thought of the disgust
that takes the place of the joy in his labor that he had in
the time of it, 1. 60.

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 237

because I must leave it to the man
who shall be after me, — and who
knoweth whether he will be a wise
man or a fool ? yet will he have power
over all my labor which I have la- 100
bored, and wherein I have been wise
under the sun. This too is vanity.

And I revolved this until it made
my heart despair concerning all the
labor which I had labored under the ios
sun. For there shall be a man whose

CHAP. n. 18-21.

96. The man who shall be after me ; as Koheleth is assum
ing the character of Solomon, this may ascribe to him a
misgiving about Rehoboam, whose character, as given in
1 Kings xii., may well have embittered to Solomon the
prospect of the succession. The allusion to the king who is
a boy, in vi. 1. 76, is conformed, whether so intended or not,
to the character of young Rehoboam.

99. Yet will he have power ; as soon as the labor is ex
ternalized in an accomplished work or accumulation it is at
the mercy of every arbitrary hand, to profane or pervert
or annul ; all its inwardness, all that makes it vital, is gone
from it.

103. And I revolved this; the Hebrew word contains the
same idea of turning over in the mind which our language
has expressed in the word revolve. — Until it made my heart
despair ; Koheleth has recognized the fact in its extreme
poignancy ; it has preyed upon his mind.

106. There shall be a man - this leveling of condition by
death leads to a mere accidental distribution of what are

238 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

labor is in wisdom and in knowledge
and in skill ; yet to a man who hath
not labored therein must he leave it

110 as his portion. This also is vanity
and a great evil. For what remain-
eth to man in all his labor and in his
heart's endeavor, wherein he laboreth
under the sun? For all his days are

115 sorrows, and his toil is vexation ; also

CHAP. n. 21-23.

regarded as the rewards and blessings of life ; a man's
goods are no guarantee of his possession of wisdom or
knowledge or skill, for they may become the heritage of
one who has put nothing of himself into them. They are
not a real reward, then, for the man and his portion do not
infallibly go together.

110. As his portion • and a very barren portion, if he has
not had the blessing of the labor ; it is nothing inner, like
the portion Koheleth received in his enterprises ; see 1. 61,
above.

111. What remaineth ? This is virtually the same question
of residuum, surplusage, that Koheleth asked at the begin
ning of the Proem ; only now behind the question is the
record of an elaborate course of labor and achievement on
the largest scale, labor which ought to yield results if any
thing can.

112. In his heart's endeavor; the labor is thus supposed
to take into itself his supreme desire and ideal, and the
question asks after a residuum both outer and inner.

114. For all his days are sorrows, etc.; compare 1. 5, and
note. Of reward as measured in terms of cash value, or of

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 239

by night his heart resteth not. This
too is vanity, yea this.

Ill
THERE is no good in man save

CHAP. ii. 23, 24.

satisfying achievement, there is no real residue, compare
1. 64, note ; and now the labor itself yields more hardship than
ease, merely wears out the machinery. The question, What
remaineth ? is thus brought to the point where the answer
must be crucial. Vanity thus far, — what is there solid and
real?

118. This third section introduces the answer or solution;
what there is, if anything, real in a life of toil such as is
the general lot of man. Toward this solution he has so lim
ited the question that nothing remains but an inner blessing.

There is no good in man • as compared with the similar
assertion, Survey ii. 68, the present omits the sign of the
comparative, thus making the things here enumerated the
only good. In this first statement of life's residuum Kohe-
leth reduces to the baldest and most uncompromising terms,
as if he would recognize the best available as a kind of pis
alter. This he does probably because all around him men
are cherishing the glamour of a speculative post-obituary
future ; it is his austere answer to the wordiness of his
time. But as he goes on in his Surveys, he comes to see
more and more clearly that this very lot is a good absolutely
and intrinsically, and he amplifies and enriches it into a
sterling programme of life ; see the successive summaries,
Survey ii. 30, 67 ; iii. 117 ; iv. 81 ; v. 140 ; vi. 103 ; vii. 8.
This gradation and climax of summary is one of the most
striking notes of homogeneity and progress in the book ;

240 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

The solution to eat and drink and make his soul see

120 good in his labor ; but also this, I saw

that this, is from the hand of God.

CHAP. ii. 24.

we can see by these that he has one line of thought, and
that his mood is under control.

119. To eat and drink ; neither here nor anywhere else in
Koheleth are eating and drinking a symbol of sensuality;
rather they symbolize well-being and a contented mind.
The good of life is here reduced to lowest and therefore
most universal terms. If when a man worries over his work
he cannot sleep (see 1. 116), so conversely, when a man enjoys
his work he can eat, he has a good appetite. The contrast
drawn below, between righteous and sinner, turns not on
having more or less to eat, but on labor with or without an
inner compensation. To be able to eat and drink connotes
the spontaneous enjoyment of existence, as if all were just
as it should be. — And make his soul see good, that is, enjoy
his labor, as seeing therein the truest expression of his
soul. This is the central point of all, — man's work, that
which takes into itself his talents, his endowments, his
interests, his creative powers. The succeeding amplifica
tions of this idea (see two notes preceding) show clearly
that man's work, with what it involves, represents Ko-
heleth's deepest solution of life. " The attitude of work,"
says Arthur Hugh Clough, " is the only one in which one
can see things properly." " It cannot be too often repeated,"
says William Morris, " that the true incentive to useful
and happy labor is, and must be, pleasure in the work
itself."

120. But also ; as much as to say, humble as this seems,
it is really great ; it is the true solution of life.

121. From the hand of God; or, as Koheleth elsewhere

I AN INDUCTION OF LIFE 241

For who may eat, or who may have whose
enioyment, except from Him? For to response Is

J J revealed in

a man that is good in His sight He wisdom and

knowledge

giveth wisdom, and knowledge, and 125 and loy-
joy ; but to the sinner He giveth toil,

CHAP. n. 25, 26.

expresses it, it is man's portion ; see ii. 69 ; iii. 126; v. 149.
The significance of it as a gift is repeatedly enlarged upon ;
see especially v. 142.

123. Except from Him - there is an uncertainty of reading
here between " Him " (except from Him) and " me " (more
than I). I have chosen the former, as more at one with the
whole passage. This expression, if the true reading, is
Koheleth's own limitation of his eating and enjoyment ; he
recognizes that the very possession of such pleasure, undis
turbed by care or guilt, is an indication of God's approval
and response.

125. Wisdom, and knowledge, and joy ; a specification of
what it means when one's soul sees good in his labor. It
is the inner, the intrinsic resultant of a work well done ;
the man has these within, however vain is all without, and
this is the gift attached to life, the gift of God. If a man
has these, he has no occasion to seek to other worlds or
future times, he has the core of life here.

126. He giveth toil; another way of saying the sinner
has nothing intrinsic left, no surplusage, only his labor for
his pains. To be a sinner is, by the very terms of the Wis
dom philosophy, to choose the way of folly, the way that
lacks wisdom ; here also the wisdom and the knowledge
and the joy are recognized not merely as means to accom
plish ends, but as the fibre of life itself, without which labor
is only toil.

242 WORDS OF KOHELETH I

to gather, and to amass, in order to
give to him that is good in the sight
of God, — which, truly, is vanity, and
130 a chase after wind.

CHAP. n. 26.

127. In order to give ; not that the possessions of the
wicked are taken arbitrarily and given to the good ; but if
the good stand the same chance of inheritance as the fool
ish (compare 1. 108), all the fruit of toil may go to him.
This is perhaps Koheleth's way of saying the meek shall
inherit the earth ; see Psalm xxxvii. 11.

129. Which, truly, etc. This turn is adopted to show that
the vanity applies to the last thing named. This is certainly
true ; it is not so clear, however, that Koheleth intends it
to apply to the compensating gift of God mentioned before,
which rather seems to be regarded as the counterweight to
vanity.

Thus, as Koheleth in his induction has taken up and tested
the facts of life, he has steered the solution step by step
away from the external and superficial to the intrinsic en
dowment of soul which enriches life in the midst of toil and
makes labor itself an instrument of its joy. He has had a
glimpse, too, of the truth that there is something deeper
still, as yet unresolved, which may prove to be a surplusage,
a something over, to answer his quest.

T

THE SECOND SURVEY

V

TIMES AND SEASONS

0 everything there is a season, The thesis

and a time to every purpose Survey.
under heaven.

CHAP. m. 1.

From the world of environment, with its labors, its enter
prises, its enjoyments, Koheleth now turns to the world of
time ; and the proposition with which he sets out, with its
broad universality, corresponds in scale to his avowal in the
First Survey that his concern is with " all that is wrought
under the heavens ; " see i. 4. So here, we may say, his
thought seeks to range over all the times available in the
present state of existence ; and just as in the previous
Survey the present world has furnished field for all the
powers and compensations of the soul, without necessity
of completion in another world, so here the present time
will be found sufficient to itself, without the necessity of
supplementation by a differently conditioned eternity.

LINE 1. A season, and a time. The distinction is much the
same as between the Greek Kaip&s and xp^vos- The lapse of
time (xptvos) brings to everything its fitting time or occasion

2. Every purpose under heaven. The writer is contem
plating, in a cosmic sense, the world of purpose as apart
from moral aspects ; every purpose for the present argu-

244 WORDS OF KOHELETH II

I

HOW the A TIME to be born, and a time to

most con- . .

trary things 5 die ; a time to plant, and a time to

have their

season, uproot that which is planted ; a time

timely™ *° kill, and a time to heal ; a time to

tear down, and a time to build up ; a

time to weep, and a time to laugh ; a

10 time to lament, and a time to exult ;

a time to scatter stones, and a time

to gather stones ; a time to embrace,

and a time to refrain from embracing ;

a time to seek, and a time to lose ; a

CHAP. in. 2-6.

ment may be regarded as legitimate and normal. The ques
tion of evil purpose comes up in other connections.

4 sqq. This paragraph amplifies the proposition by a
series of illustrative details ; the object evidently being to
show what contrary and mutually exclusive things may
coexist in a world wherein so many purposes are cher
ished. The order of the details is, perhaps designedly, left
rather miscellaneous, as better showing the infinite variety
of things; though at the beginning Koheleth seems to be
thinking more of the great elemental events and experiences
of life, and toward the end more of the attitude and con
duct in which these are naturally reflected. The animus of
the enumeration seems to be directed against the idea of
seeking greater field or opportunity in some time not yet
determined; as much as to say the whole world of oppor
tunity is before us now.

II TIMES AND SEASONS 245

time to keep, and a time to throw is
away ; a time to rend, and a time to
mend ; a time to be silent, and a time
to speak ; a time to love, and a time to
hate ; a time for war, and a time for
peace. 20

II
WHAT profit hath the worker, in Man's work

also lias its

that wherein he laboreth ? time ;

CHAP. in. 6-9.

21 sq. What profit hath the worker f The same question
that is asked at the beginning, Proem, 1. 3; repeated here for
the sake of its application to the world of time. The impli
cation of it here is, If so various purposes are on occasion
timely, and if man has merely to respond to occasion, doing
what wisdom dictates at the juncture, — thus being, as it
were, a mere echo to the impulse of the time, — what is
there more, what surplusage yielded, to add to manhood
assets ? The question has still its doubtful outlook ; but it
is to be noted here that Koheleth does not immediately re
duce the answer to vanity; he goes on as if he had in mind
at least a partial answer.

21. The worker; Koheleth, though assuming the role of a
king, has the dialect, the range of thought, the attitude, not
of the king but of the wage-worker. His controlling ques
tion, What profit ? represents the worker's search for re
ward, the craving of one who, placed in this world by no
choice of his own, and subject to a sternly exacting environ
ment, would use the world to best purpose and secure the
true values of life.

246 WORDS OF KOHELETH II

tout in it is I have seen the toil which God

a strain of

to gitvKt given to the sons of men, to toil

character* K therein. Everything hath He made

beautiful in its time; also He hath

CHAP. in. 10, 11.

23. / have seen the toil. Koheleth uses words in this con
nection which recognize three aspects or elements of work.
The work recognized in the worker, 1. 21, is that which
shapes or accomplishes, brings some worthy product to
pass; and it will be noted that the profit about which he
asks follows supposably this noblest concept of work. The
work recognized in laboreth, 1. 22, is the activity or effort
involved in work, work as a form of energy. The toil in
the present line names the drudgery and routine and hard
ship of which work is capable, and which as one looks over
the toiling world seems so sadly its prevailing character. It
is to be noted, as an indication of Koheleth's constructive
thought, that the redeeming features of beauty and eternity
are mentioned in connection with this grimmest aspect of
work; he sees them shining beyond not merely the triumph
of achievement, but the welter of toil.

25. Everything hath He made beautiful ; things as well as
persons, the work and the worker, the agent and the event,
alike.

26. In its time ; the timeliness of a thing is its beauty;
without its occasion as a complementing element, it is only
the divided half of a fitting result, and so inert or abnormal.
In this idea Koheleth seems to come more in sight of a
cosmos or ordered system of things, and in the present Sur
vey we hear very little of that undertone of vanity which
was so insistent in the Proem and the First Survey. A solu
tion of life is beginning to shape itself.

II TIMES AND SEASONS 247

put eternity in their heart ; — yet not
so that man findeth out the work

CHAP. m. 11.

27. Eternity in their heart ; some translate this the worldy
it is hard to see why, unless through incapacity to understand
the idea, for if the word cbvn (ha-olam) does not mean
eternity, then the Hebrew language has no word for eter
nity. If we regard it as meaning the world, we must still
understand it as the world of time • it expresses illimitable
time as our word universe expresses the illimitable world
of space. And here the word seems to be set by contrast to
time; as much as to. have said, Everything is beautiful as
related to its fitting time, but it has more than mere fitness
to time in it ; it has a pulsation of the timeless, the per
manent, the intrinsic. In the heart of things there is a
power and purpose which stretches beyond the place or
period in which it is fulfilling its function. This idea is part
of Koheleth's supreme thought, which is that life should be
made up not with reference to its ending, but to its con
tinuance ; not with reference to relinquishing the work in
order to receive its wage, but with reference to the work as
it is intrinsically, and as it is fitted for permanence. So his
mention of eternity in the heart is another element in which
man is too large for his dwelling-place; he is too large for
his earth-bounded time, just as, with reference to his en
vironment, he is obsessed by a disease of research (see i. 5),
and with wisdom " beyond the demand " (i. 83). In this
endowment of man we see that Koheleth is going far to
offset the agnosticism toward futurity which is later asserted
so emphatically; he is, in fact, expressing the eternal life
in terms of work rather than making it a matter of dreams
and philosophical speculation.

27. Yet not so; more literally without man's finding, etc.

248 WORDS OF KOHELETH II

which God hath wrought, from the

so beginning, and to the end. I know

that there is no good in them, save to

CHAP. ni. 11, 12.

By this clause he limits his idea of eternity in the heart to
the power of eternity, denying to it the element of predic
tion or supernatural insight. Man as a working being has no
business with that knowledge of origins or destinies which
belongs to God; his eternity is expressed in terms of work;
his work, as pointing to some " far-off divine event " is his
prophecy of it. Tennyson has reproduced the thought of
this verse very accurately in his Two Voices, both as re
gards the mystic prophecy and as regards the limitation of
man's insight: —

" * Here sits he shaping wings to fly :
His heart forebodes a mystery :
He names the name Eternity.

" ' He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend,
And thro' thick veils to apprehend
A labour working to an end.

" ' The end and the beginning vex
His reason : many things perplex,
With motions, checks, and counterchecks.' "

Here, we may say, Koheleth ascribes to man all that is
essential in immortality, all the energy and motive-power
of it, while setting himself firmly against regarding it as
prompting to some phase of fortune-telling, and thus favor
ing the uncanny business of magic, necromancy, or sooth
saying on the one hand, or of philosophic speculation, which
is a kind of psychic research, on the other. For the relation
of all this to his age and its thought, see Introductory
Study, pp. 74-78.

31. In them ; the antecedent to this pronoun, it will be

II TIMES AND SEASONS 249

rejoice and to do good in their life ;
and so of every man, that he should
eat and drink and see good in all his

CHAP. m. 12, 13.

noted, is everything; Koheleth first defines the good of life
for the world of life in general. — To rejoice and to do
good ; joy is the symbol of normal working, the indication
that all the forces of life are acting together in health and
unison. — To do good is not the New Testament idea of
seeking the weal of men by beneficence ; Koheleth's age
was not ripe for the fullness of this conception yet. Nor
is it the mere thought of getting the good of life, as the
margin of the Revised Version puts it. Spoken of " every
thing" as it is here, it seems nearly to answer to the ful
fillment of function, accomplishing the object that it was
made for.

32. And so of every man; a thing analogous to what has
been asserted of everything is applied now to the life of
man.

33. Should eat and drink ; if we bring over the analogy
of 1. 31 as suggesting this of man, then eating and drinking
is for man with eternity in his heart what rejoicing is for
everything, it is the symbol of healthy and happy life;
compare on i. 119. " They eat and drink, not because 'to
morrow we die,' but because their day has a taste in it of
eternity; their to-morrow suggests not death but life. Life's
present tense is to them not only an existence but a becom
ing." _ Brierly, Ourselves and the Universe, p. 223.

34. And see good in all his labor corresponds, in the same
parallel, to doing good in life; it is taking labor, which is
man's prevailing lot, and getting from it its capacity for
blessing and upbuilding. As we compare the passages of

250 WORDS OF KOHELETH II

35 labor, — which is the gift of God. I
know that everything God doeth shall
be for ever ; to it there is no adding,
and from it there is no subtracting ;

CHAP. m. 13, 14.

Koheleth wherein labor is spoken of we cannot resist the
conclusion that in labor, rightly accepted and done, lies in
great part his solution of this earthly life ; we can put his
sentiment by the side of John Burroughs's words: " Blessed
is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation
in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete
outlet to all the forces there are in him." — Literary Values,
p. 250.

35. Which is the gift of God • note how many times Ko
heleth calls just this thing, or some aspect of it, God's gift ;
compare i. 121-124 ; iii. 126 ; see also what is said of man's
portion, i. 61, note.

36. Shall be for ever- the permanent work of God seems
to be held up here as a type for man's work to emulate.
Man has eternity in his heart, and God's gift to him is the
power of seeing good in his labor and of enjoying life ac
cordingly ; and now God's eternal work stands before him
to teach him the value of his, and to be an object-lesson of
the permanent and intrinsic.

37. No adding nor subtracting ; Koheleth is seeking for
absolute values, unchanged by time and circumstance ; and
he finds them in God's work, the eternal work itself, just
as he has failed to find them in the reward of work or
even in its products. Here there is something not subject to
vanity ; and man's nearest contact with it is wreaking on
his own work the wealth of a heart in which God has put
eternity.

n TIMES AND SEASONS 251

and God hath so done that men should
fear before Him. That which is, long 40
ago it was ; and that which is to be
already hath been ; and God will re
quire that which hath been banished.

CHAP. in. 14, 15.

39. That men should fear before Him; it is the contem
plation of God's changeless work which is calculated to
rouse fear, or perhaps we may say reverence, in man ;
and it is such fear rather than idle speculation on futurity
which is of avail for life, because such reverence is a source
of motive. This is what Koheleth sets over against the
fruitless philosophizings of his time. One is reminded of
Tennyson's

" Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell."

40. That which is, etc. In the Proem, 1. 25, this asser
tion has been made as an illustration of the self-returning
round of things without surplusage ; here it is made as
the illustration of the permanence of God's work. It fol
lows as a corollary from the fact that everything has its
time. The thing has not passed out of existence ; it cannot
be driven away (or banished) forever ; it is merely, so to
say, in another part of its orbit (compare the idea of re
curring cycles in the Proem), merely out of its fitting
time ; and when the juncture for it comes again, it will
come.

43. Banished; literally driven away. It seems to refer in
a general and vague way to those customs or tendencies in
men, good or evil, which men are most concerned to stamp
out when, as we say, they fight against nature. Such an
attempt is fighting against God's work.

252 WORDS OF KOHELETH II

III

A time like- AND moreover I saw under the sun :

judgment, 45 the place of judgment, that wickedness
was there ; and the place of righteous
ness, that wickedness was there. I said
in my heart, " The righteous and the
wicked God will judge ; for there too

CHAP. m. 16, 17.

44, And moreover 1 saw • Koheleth turns for a moment
to the palpable evils under the sun, not, however, to discuss
them, except under the one aspect of their relation to times.
The more detailed discussion of human evil and perversity
is the work of the next Survey.

45, 47. That wickedness was there - Koheleth has been
contemplating the sphere of God's work, where is constancy
and permanence ; but now turning to things " under the
sun," he sees how in the places where man's work should
be likest God's, in the places of judgment and righteousness,
man's work may squarely traverse its ideal. And for a
time he may have it so, may seem to have turned the world's
affairs into a perverted channel. But he does not reckon
with the element of time.

49. God will judge • not in the sense of condemnation,
for righteous are included with wicked ; but in the sense
of setting the right and wrong of things in their true light,
and in God's light, so that all shall get their just due. —
For there too ; namely, in the place of judgment and right
eousness. What has been said about the time for everything
is true of judgment; that is merely a particular instance of
a universal truth.

II TIMES AND SEASONS 253

is a time for every purpose and for so
every work."

I said in my heart, " For the sake which in the

£ j_i p . i • • * s*t i present Is

of the sons of men this is, for God to veiled for

educative
prove them and for them to see that «"is.

by nature they are beast." For the sons 55

CHAP. m. 17, 18.

52. For the sake of the sons of men this is. What does this
refer to ? I think in a general sense to the fact that judg
ment is veiled. For a time everything may seem chance
and confusion ; wickedness rampant, no authoritative ver
dict obtainable. How can we tell what standard of things
shall survive and be eternal? And why should it be so
confused? why is there not a mechanically working law
of right and wrong like a law of nature ? Koheleth's an
swer here is, there is an educative value in this very uncer
tainty.

53. For God to prove them, etc. In two ways this educa
tive value is apparent : for one thing, it opens a chance for
him to be proved, and to develop wisdom of character,
which could not be if judgment and righteousness were
forced unerringly upon men's acts ; for another, it forces
him back to the realm of the animal, and makes him work
out his lot here rather than in the unconditioned realm of
the God.

55. By nature ; literally for themselves. It seems to refer
to the centre of man's existence, what he is at bottom, so
far as appearance and apparent destiny go. — Are beast;
or as in modern diction we should say, are animal. The
one aspect in which man is here regarded as identical with
the animal is the chance that controls his life, a chance
that has been led up to by contemplation of the chance,

264 WORDS OF KOHELETH II

of men are chance, and chance is the
beast, and one hap befalleth them.
As dieth the one, so dieth the other ;
and preeminence of man over beast is
GO there none ; for all is a vapor. All go
to one place : all are from the dust,

CHAP. m. 19, 20.

or perversity, that characterizes his highest acts, judgment
and righteousness. The contrast to this has been described,
11. 35-38, in the work of God, which is so unerringly per
fect that nothing can be added or subtracted, nor has it
elements of transitoriness. Man, Koheleth implies, is not
like God in this, though he has a strain of eternity and a
capacity of fearing God ; he is like the beast, his work has
such an element of chance that he must wait on times for
his ideals to get their due. It is good for him, in some
respects, to know he is animal, just as it is good for him
in some respects to know that he is only a little lower
than God ; compare Psalm viii. 5.

58. As dieth the one • all through this section about man
and beast there is a hardness and bluntness of expression
which seems to betoken a polemic spirit ; Koheleth is not
merely giving voice to melancholy musings on death, but
making good his case against some error of his time, and
to this end is portraying the case in the most uncompro
mising terms it will bear. As striking contrast to this truc
ulent spirit, compare Job's musings on a like problem, Job
xiv. 7-15. What this error — or shallowness — of the time
is has been already identified with the popular doctrine of
immortality ; see Introductory Study, p. 44.

60. A vapor • the same word elsewhere translated vanity •
the primary meaning seems more expressive here. — All

II TIMES AND SEASONS 265

and all return to dust. Who knoweth
the spirit of the sons of men, whether
it mounteth upward, and the spirit of
the beast, whether it goeth downward 65
to the earth ?

CHAP. HI. 21.

go to one place; as the succeeding clause specifies, the
place after death is not what Koheleth is thinking of, but
simply the dust, just as for the present consideration he
is thinking merely of the phenomenal life of man, that
wherein he is identical with the animal. He is concerned
with what we can see, the body, the material life, and views
this as a scientist would, confining himself to what the
senses can prove.

62. Who knoweth the spirit, etc. The question about the
body cannot but raise the counter question, what of the
spirit ? And the scientific answer, so obviously true still, is,
that there is no more ground, from a phenomenal point of
view, for saying the spirit survives than for saying the body
survives.

63. Whether it mounteth upward; Koheleth is here evi
dently dealing with a current speculation of his day that
the difference between man and beast is in the specific
gravity, so to say, of their breath or spirit. This has the
mark of a rather refined philosophical notion, put forth, it
would seem, in the interest of immortality, and in itself
shows that the current doctrine was a theory alone, not a
surge of spiritual life seeking its immortal sphere ; see
Introductory Study, p. 51. Koheleth combats the doctrine,
not by denying it, but by asserting that there is no prov
ing it. We do not know. Thus he takes the scientific atti
tude toward it, the attitude which demands verification.

256 WORDS OF KOHELETH II

IV
Thesoiu- WHEREFORE I saw that there is

tion : to re

joice in one's nothing better than that man should

own works,

rejoice in his own works ; for that is

Se problem- 70 ^s portion. For who shall bring him
atic future. g]aaU b

CHAP. m. 22.

67. Wherefore I saw, etc. This conclusion, or solution, is
given briefly, just enough to bring to mind what has been
more fully expressed in 11. 30-35. If, as the upshot of the
Survey, it shuts man up to this moment of being, it also sets
before him a resource worthy of his best powers, in the
work that contains such noble possibilities, and in the surge
of eternity which vitalizes it.

68. Should rejoice in his own works • in this summary he
leaves out the eating and drinking (compare 1. 33), and this
shows that it is not they, as sensual indulgence, but the
works, which for him focus the meaning of life, and they
are merely symbols of the well-being of the man. — The
word translated works is the one that represents work in
its nobler creative aspect ; see note on 1. 23.

69. That is his portion • that is, the rejoicing is his por
tion, what he gets out of work, just as in the First Survey,
1. 60, Koheleth found it was his own. Man is a creative
being, and in thus emulating the activity of God is his joy.

70. Who shall bring him to see ; here again is not a denial
of the fact of immortality, but only of the seeing of the fact.

71. What shall be after him ; Koheleth's imagination re
fuses to think of a man as surviving the shock of death ;
and what comes thereafter is thought of somewhat crudely
as after him, — as if he were no more. Similarly, iv. 44.

THE THIRD SURVEY
IN A CROOKED WORLD

I

AND I turned again, and saw Particulars
all the oppressions that are Survey:

CHAP. rv. 1.

LINE 1. And I turned again • Koheleth's phrase for mak
ing transition to a new fact in his survey of things ; com
pare 1. 23. Having in a general way traversed the field of
life, both as related to environment (First Survey) and as
related to time (Second Survey), and having deduced there
from the heartening lesson of wisdom and timely work, he
now turns to the more baffling ways of men. He has
already hinted in the Second Survey, 11. 44-47, at the per
versities that we find in high places ; here he extends the
indictment to all the relations of men, which, being per
vaded with evil, suffer some discount from the ideal of a
perfect order of righteousness. The object of the present
Survey, it would seem, is to propose some rational way of
life in the midst of things as they are, when all human dis
counts are made.

2. All the oppressions ; Koheleth has seen all the labors
(cf. Second Survey, 1. 23) ; now by a similar large outlook he
sees, the world over, the heartlessness of those who have
the upper hand, and its cruel results. There must needs be
high and low, stupid and clever, controller and controlled ;

258 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

i. Graemes wrought under the sun ; and behold,

ol the upper

hand toward the tears oi the oppressed, and they

inferiors. J

5 had no comforter ; and from the hand

of their oppressors outrage, — and
they had no comforter. And I praised

CHAP. iv. 1, 2.

and the evil that besets these relations is lack of sympathy,
the man brutally doing what he has might and opportunity
to do, regardless of the misery he makes, or the law he
transgresses. This fact touches the very heart of that lack
which Koheleth dimly discerns in his world and dispensa
tion, — the lack of the free outflow of human love.

4. The tears of the oppressed • here, as everywhere, Kohe
leth reveals his sympathies with the under classes ; it is for
them, the ones on whom the burdens of life fall heaviest,
that he is working out this chapter and the whole book.
The repetition of the phrase, " and they had no comforter,"
conveys this sympathy in a very reserved yet powerful
way.

6. Outrage; the violence that passes all bounds of de
cency or expediency. The fact is portrayed in strong enough
terms to include the extreme ; there is a kind of overflow,
or superfluity (cf. First Survey, 1. 83), even in human heart-
lessness, which evinces the greatness of man's nature. —
And they had no comforter • the pathos of the situation put
into a repeat, a kind of refrain ; see previous note.

7. And I praised the dead ; in the First Survey, 1. 91, Ko-
heleth's immediate and preliminary conclusion, the verdict
as it were of his impulse, was, " And I hated life." The
present verse is a similar impulse verdict. If he comes later
upon a consideration which mitigates the sting and the evil,
as in fact he does, yet it may be seen that he has been as

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 259

the dead, who are already dead, more
than the living, who are living yet ; *
and, as better than they both, him 10
who hath not yet been, who hath not
seen the evil work that is wrought
under the sun.

And I saw all labor, and all skill in

CHAP. iv. 2-4.

low in the depths as any for whom he is writing. Many
abide in their first verdict, the verdict of sentiment, and
shape their life's procedure on it ; this, however, is not the
philosophic attitude. For the present, though, he leaves this
view of oppressions where it is, in order to gather other
facts that consort with it, in preparation for a conclusion
which shall cover them all.

11. Hath not yet been • a similar longing for the lot of the
"hidden, untimely birth," pressed from him by his own
suffering, has been uttered by Job, iii. 16. The present
utterance, rising from the view of the suffering of all op
pressed, is more deliberate and calm, though still the out
cry of feeling rather than the deduction of logic.

12. Hath not seen ; it is hard to say which gives greater
pain, the suffering of oppression or the seeing of the evil.
Koheleth, who has the world burden on his heart, has the
pain of the sympathizer, of him who sees and would alle
viate ; and at first it seems to him that no life at all were
better than life which must be torn with the fellow-suffer
ing of such sights. It is his unconscious preparation for the
manhood stage wherein love shall have free course and
expression ; cf. Introductory Study, pp. 145 sqq.

14-22. As the first paragraph contemplated evils from

260 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

2. Rivalries 15 work, that it is cause of envy to a

equals, im- man from his neighbor. This also is
pairing, as

also does vanity, and a chase after wind. And

indolent

lolly, though the fool folding his hand eat-

CHAP. iv. 4, 5.

those who have the upper hand, this turns to the evils that
may exist between equals.

14. All labor. Turning again to the labor which has been
so much in his mind, Koheleth sees a new aspect of it more
germane to the present stage of discussion ; not the great
tide or welter of it now, as in Survey i. 7, ii. 23, but that
aspect of it which ought naturally to minister joy and sat
isfaction (cf. Survey i. 60, 119 ; ii. 34, 68), namely, its skill,
the individuality which makes it as it were a fine art. Even
from the side of labor, than which there is " nothing better,"
there is a discount to be reckoned, on account of man's hard
heart.

15. Cause of envy. All the rivalries, the jealousies, the
competitions of business come to mind in this remark, which
is as true as it ever was. The strange puzzle of it is that
men, in their eagerness to live, should not be willing to let
live ; that because they have skill or cleverness or success,
they should be disturbed because another has the same.

17. Vanity, and a chase after wind j because nothing
comes of such rivalry, nothing satisfying or permanent.
If a man by his envy gets an advantage over his fellow, and
crushes him under by competition, he is after all only in the
same old category of that " labor," successful or otherwise,
which brings with it no surplusage. Thus Koheleth pro
nounces his verdict on the form of success that men think
most of nowadays.

18. Though the fool, etc. The coherence of this with the

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 261

eth his flesh, yet the hollow of the the ideal
palm full of restfulness is better than 20 activity.
CHAP. iv. 6.

next clause is obscure, arising from the fact that Koheleth
has here introduced two maxims from his collection, and,
as is not unusual with him, has not made the joining seams
tight between them and the rest of the thought and be
tween the two. The idea to which he is evidently steering
is the value of tranquillity or peace, the need that life should
move normally. The thought of the previous verse has re
vealed an obstacle to this ideal, in the envies that attend
man's best work. It is like sand and friction in the ma
chinery, or, to use Koheleth's dialect, it throws the life back
on the profitless ground of vanity. Peace, he would say,
only a little peace, only a handful, were better than such a
laboring and disturbed state. But the idea of such restful-
ness suggests the thought of its excess, or rather caricature,
rest carried on to mere sloth and stagnation. This distor
tion of it must be guarded against. Hence the maxim about
the fool. It is as if he had said, Rest may be abused, so
as to become a disintegrator of life ; and yet rest is good,
much better than an activity which contains bitter envy-
ings and which ends in a vain pursuit. Compare Matthew
Arnold's lin3S in Youth and Calm: —

" It hears a voice within it tell,
Calm 's not life's crown, though calm is well."

Though stagnation is possible, restfulness, the majestic rest-
fulness of a full tide of life, is still the ideal.

18. Eateih his flesh ; that is, he falls away from mere
disinclination to maintain himself ; his spiritual substance
used up in sloth as animals' fat wastes away in hibernation.

19. The hollow of the palm ; this periphrasis, suggested by
the derivation of the Hebrew word for " hand " here used

262 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

both fists full of labor and striving
after wind.
3. The uiti- And turning yet again, I saw van-

such exliu- ity under the sun. There is one, and

si ve sell- /

regard. 25 there is no second ; also son or brother

hath he none ; and there is no end to
all his labor, nor yet are his eyes sat-

CHAP. iv. 6-8.

(kaph), is adopted as stronger antithesis to "both fists"
(hophnayim) in the next clause.

20. Restfulness ; not merely objective rest, but the inward
capacity for rest ; the ability to do tasks easily and joyfully
would also be legitimately included under such state of soul,
and was probably in the mind of Koheleth as part of the
true ideal.

21. Full of labor ; as this stands, it is a matter of course,
a truism. By an anacoluthon Koheleth takes the final
result as he sees it for the thing which to the man seems
desirable ; as if he had said, " better . . . than both fists
full of [what will surely turn out to be] labor," etc.

23. And turning yet again. There is a kind of gradation
in the three types of human evil specified in lines 1-31.
First (1-13) the man of the upper hand in his cruelty to
inferiors ; then (14-22) the man of skill in his envy of
equals ; and here (23-31) the man of success who, having
had his way with inferiors and rivals, stands alone. This
last is thus the logic of the other two carried to its limit.
Cruelty and envy tend to make men stand alone in the
earth ; cf. Isaiah v. 8. And the end of all this, as of the
others, is vanity.

26. No end to all his labor; his activity has become a
disease, like Koheleth's disease of research (Survey i. 5),

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 263

isfied with riches. " And for whom,"
saith he, " do I labor, and stint my
soul of good?" This also is vanity, so
yea, a sad travail this.

II

BETTER two than one ; because
they have a good recompense in their

CHAP. iv. 8, 9.

insisting on continuance, though there is no goal or mo
tive. That mysterious greatness of soul, too, has super
vened ; his eyes are not satisfied with riches, he is too large
for accumulations to fill.

27. Nor yet are his eyes satisfied; this mystery of manhood
has already been mentioned hi the Proem, 1. 18 ; and it
will be taken up again for solution, in the Fourth Survey,
11. 1-33.

28. "And for whom?" — This is his moment of self-
measurement ; he has come to himself and inquires the
meaning of it all, as Koheleth has done of himself ; cf.
Survey i. 82. This question of the survival of property has
already troubled Koheleth ; cf. Survey i. 96, 108.

31. A sad travail ; the same sort of disease, or obsession,
attacking the solitary rich man that has been ascribed by
Koheleth to the " sons of men " in their craving for know
ledge ; see Survey i. 5, also note on 1. 26, above.

32 sqq. With this section a number of things are given
as better alternatives ; as if Koheleth, looking over the
affairs of a crooked world, could not give absolute ideals,
but simply choice between things more or less evil. He
seems to recognize instinctively, as a consequence of his
realization of the limited legalistic or cosmic order, that an

264 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

Better alter- labor. For if they fall, the one lif teth

natives die- , .

tated by 35 up his comrade ; but woe to mm, the

good sense, '

one? wno falleth, when there is no sec-

rious evils. on(j to ijft him up. Also if two lie

i. What is together, they have warmth : but how

better in the . J

every- day can there be warmth for one alone ?

relations oi

men- 40 And if a man overpower the one, two

shall stand against him; and the
threefold cord is not quickly broken.

CHAP. iv. 10-12.

optimistic outlook is hardly possible. For such the world
must await the coming of that full-grown spiritual order
which even Koheleth sees as little as do his contempora
ries. But he can see the melioristic outlook ; hence his
view of better alternatives, partial compensations, in these
coming lines 32-82, in view of the crooked world, and in
the Fourth Survey, 11. 46-80, in view of the mystery that
encompasses us round.

32. Better two than one. This paragraph is naturally sug
gested by the trend of all that has preceded in this Survey,
which thus far has named the cruelties, the rivalries, the
selfish isolation, that come from the antipathies of men.
The logic of all this was segregation ; man's hand against
his brother man. And now the counsel of this paragraph,
dictated by good sense if by no higher motive, reduces itself
to this : it is better to pull together than to pull apart.

33. A good recompense. It is a very practical and not an
altruistic motive that Koheleth urges ; the help and warmth
are what the man gets, not what he bestows, and his joy is
in that.

42. The threefold cord ; if two helping each other be a

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 265

Better is a child, poor and wise, 2. What is

,-,.,,• i better in the

than an old and foolish king, who leadership

. . of state,

knoweth not how to take admonition 45

any more. For out of the house of
bondsmen he hath gone forth to be
come king ; nay, in his own realm he
was born poor. I saw all the living

CHAP. iv. 13-15.

better alternative than one, then three pulling together is
better still ; a hint here toward the mutual helpfulness of a
harmonious society. This idea, a commonplace now, had
hardly struggled into men's wisest thoughts in Koheleth's
time.

43. Better is a child, that is, on the throne. If Koheleth
had in mind what he had actually seen, the king referred
to is not clearly identifiable. Later also, and in less compli
mentary terms, a boy king is alluded to ; see the Sixth
Survey, 11. 76-80, and historical note there.

44. Who knoweth not how, etc. The point of this alterna
tive seems to be : Better be going up from humility than
be going down from wisdom. It is the direction that sig
nifies, not the antecedent poverty and bonds, nor the ante
cedent wisdom. A king whose reign is on the increase in
efficiency, not decadent, — this is the better lot in the lead
ership of state, as its like is the better everywhere.

46. For out of the house of bondsmen ; the fact that he
lifted himself up from such depth is evidence of his in
trinsic energy and worth.

49. / saw ; Koheleth speaks here as if he were making
a transcript from his own observation. — All the living; a
hyperbole, like our common expression, " all the world."
The popularity is taken as corresponding in this case with

266 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

50 that walk under the sun on the side
of this youth, the second, as he put
himself in the old man's stead, — no
end to all the people, to all over whom
he was. And yet not even in him shall

55 they that come after rejoice ; for this
likewise is vanity and a chase after
wind.

3. What is Keep thy foot when thou goest to

tetter in the „ ~ , , , . , .

house of the house of God ; and draw nigh to
God.

CHAP. iv. 15-v. 1.

the better alternative ; the people respond to the growing
wisdom and energy of their youthful king.

64. And yet not even in him; all this is only relative, not
absolute ; however great his success, yet this kind of suc
cess belongs to the category of vain things ; it is only a
better alternative where all is transitory. The conclusion
thus arrived at has already been broached, Proem, 27-31.

59. The house of God ; the Temple, which in the time
when the book was written had become the capitol of the
Jewish life, religious and national. The few words used
to describe it here recognize it as a place of sacrifice, and
probably of song and liturgy, as the virtue inculcated re
garding the service is "drawing nigh to hear." It seems to
have been treated as a place where perfunctory attend
ance, without participation, had become prevalent ; and such
treatment would naturally be given, on the part of the
worldly, to the prescribed and familiar ceremonials of a
state church. The counsel of this passage is addressed to
those who go to church because it is the fashion, and to
whom it is a form.

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 267

hear rather than to offer the fools' GO
sacrifice ; for unwittingly they do evil.
Be not rash with thy mouth, and let
not thy heart hasten to utter a word

CHAP. v. 1, 2.

60. Rather than ; it is these words that indicate the bet
ter alternative with which this paragraph deals ; another
way of saying it is better, or wiser, to do this than to do
that. — The fools' sacrifice • this expression sounds like a
contemptuous coinage of Koheleth's. What this " fools' sac
rifice " is, we can gather from the context. Its antithesis
and corrective is " drawing nigh to hear ; " and the counsel
about it leads Koheleth to speak of the value of silence
and reverence. What he refers to, then, would seem to be
the heedless and unseemly chatter of fools in places where
above all else they should listen ; they rush in, as a modern
maxim puts it, where angels fear to tread. So the sacrifice
they give is talk.

61. Unwittingly they do evil; literally, "they are not
knowing to do evil." To themselves it certainly is an evil,
and an affront to the principle and spirit of the service.

62. Let not thy heart hasten to utter ; this admonition, com
ing from a time pervaded by an atmosphere of religious
legalism, shares with its age in thinking of God as remote
and austere, and of his worship as largely a matter for
priests and choristers. The ideal religious attitude whose
heart-cry is Abba, Father (Romans viii. 15), is yet far in
the future ; but as between reverent awe on the one side
and empty volubility on the other, the better alternative
cannot be doubtful. It reduces itself to an issue not of
the voice but of the heart ; we may express it : Better in
silence be open to holy influences of the house of God

268 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

before God ; for God is in heaven,

65 and thou upon the earth; therefore

be thy words few. For as cometh the

dream in the multitude of care, so the

voice of a fool in the multitude of

words.

70 When thou vowest a vow to God,

CHAP. v. 2-4.

than in the din of words be impervious to them. It is thug
a plea to give the susceptible receptive centre of the nature
a chance ; and thereby to utilize the good for which forms
of worship are instituted.

66. Be thy words few ; in this injunction Koheleth touches
upon his sense of the deep values of silence. It is the spirit
ual attitude that he would set over against the wordy and
vapid tendencies of his age, the encounter with which, from
now onward, is a prominent animus of his thought. He
seems to think that the flood of words, apparent even in the
" fools' sacrifice " of the Temple, is in danger of swamping
all spiritual stamina and character ; hence his caveat against
it. — For as cometh, etc. ; a maxim adduced from Koheleth's
store to clinch his thought. Its force here is, that a fool's
voice, with its multitude of words, produces the same effect
on the age's findings of wisdom that a dream, as a grotesque
and unreal projection of business cares, does on the solid
ideas of life. That he had a very concrete characteristic of
his age in mind, that it was all to him like a dreamy con
fusion, would seem to be indicated in the counsel with which
he closes these alternatives, 11. 80-82, below.

70. When thou vowest a vow • the description of vows here
sounds as if the making of vows, like worship, had become
a perfunctory and conventional service, undertaken, per-

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD % 269

delay not to pay it; for he hath no 4. what is
pleasure in fools. What thou vowest, JiigSe? tt
pay. Better that thou vow not, than man? Ol
that thou vow and pay not. Let not
thy mouth cause thy flesh to sin ; and 75
say not before the messenger it was

CHAP. v. 4-6.

haps, for the religious repute that inhered in it, and so a
kind of pious fashion. If, then, one could get the repute
without the expense, it would be a shrewd piece of business.
In a state religion of priestly functions, too, vows, the one
free-will observance, would for the laity be a convenient
gauge of a man's sanctity. The text invades the custom
from the business and practical point of view, the point of
honesty.

73. Better that thou vow not. If the above-given view of
vows be correct, the better alternative involved here is:
Better forgo the religious repute than vitiate your word.
It thus compels religion to keep inseparable company with
morality. " Man's word," as King Arthur says, " is God
in man ; " more precious, therefore, than all shows of reli
gion. The temple of the heart is first of all a temple of
truth.

74. Let not thy mouth, etc. ; as it would if betrayed into a
promise which the man could not or would not fulfill.

76. Before the messenger ; the same word elsewhere ren
dered angel. It seems more natural, in the business tone of
this passage, to regard it as denoting a temple messenger
whose business it was to do the book-keeping and collect the
dues. Such an official would be necessary where vows were a
matter of fashion, as they would in their nature be a matter
of notoriety and record. In all this the same spirit is

270 , WORDS OF KOHELETH III

an error. Wherefore should God be
angry at thy voice, and destroy the
work of thy hands ?

so Though in a multitude of dreams
and vanities and words many, yet fear
thou God.

CHAP. v. 6, 7.

recognized that we hear Jesus afterward reproaching when
He denounces the plea of Corban ; see Mark vii. 11.

77. Wherefore should God be angry ; Koheleth gets at the
religion through the voice (cf. Romans x. 9), as it makes
insincere promises ; so this is another way of being a fool
through words. Multitude of words in the Temple, falsity
of words in promises made to God ; an outrage to the divine
in both cases.

78. And destroy ; this is not a threat ; it simply con
templates the issue of destruction, according to the Wis
dom tenet, by the fact of identifying the false promiser with
fools; cf. 1. 71.

80. This sentence may be regarded as the summing up
of the section here ending. The better alternative in all
these cases reduces to the fear of God. The " dreams " re
calls the maxim, 1. 66 ; the " vanities," 1. 56, and the gen
eral drift of the thought ; the " words many," 1. 60, and the
general sentiment against the multiplication of words. The
sentence is a stroke of generalizing imagination. Koheleth
feels the crookedness of the world about him as a bad
dream, wherein empty words and empty energies jostle in
a meaningless din ; and the one clear note that sounds out
as truth and sanity is, Fear God. See note on 1. 66; and for
the subject of the " words many," see Introductory Study,
p. 43.

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 271

III

IF in the province thou see oppres- onsets to the

» , ,. findings of

sion oi the poor, and wresting ot the Survey:
judgment and right, marvel not at 85
the matter ; for high watcheth over in the ma-
high, and there are higher over them. the st3e°

CHAP. v. 8.

83-116. This section seems to recur in a broad way to the
survey of things in section i. (11. 1-31), which there only
mentioned the discounts of life as facts, and drew no off
set or conclusion. There are offsets, however, which, in the
face of persecutions and rivalries and purse-pride, make life
livable; just as there are grievous discounts to the bad
eminence attained by heartless worldliness. To point these
out is Koheleth's way of preparing for the triumphant con
clusion of the present Survey, 11. 117-129.

83. If in the province • Palestine, it will be remembered,
is an outlying province, which gets its government at second
hand from a distant Persian or Grecian ruler, and which
therefore is subject to the corruptions and evils of such
government. These evils are taken as a matter of course;
the world had never conceived anything better. Koheleth
writes too, it would seem, when the nation, in a kind of
apathy, is becoming more Helleuized and tolerant of the
order of things.

86. High watcheth over high ; this seems to describe the
graded orders of officialdom, seen especially in the system
of tax-farming, wherein the official nearest the court, ob
taining the post of collector, lets and sublets to successive
collectors and publicans, and each of these in turn, striving

272 WORDS OF KOIIELETII III

Nevertheless the profit of a land is for
all ; the king himself is subservient to
90 the field.

in the cares lie that loveth silver shall not be

satisfied with silver, nor lie that loveth

CHAP. v. 9, 10.

to make his office as remunerative as possible, makes the
margin between his obligations and his receipts as great as
possible; and so in this system of "high watcheth over
high," the grinding-point, worse as the gradation is longer,
comes at last upon the poor. Cf. Expositor's Bible, Pro
verbs, p. 294, footnote 2. The undermost man must pay
the reckoning, must suffer the oppression and injustice,
with most severity and least redress ; that is inevitable in
such a line of middlemen.

88. Nevertheless ; this draws the solid offset of reality,
points to the genuine truth which confronts the crooked
shows of things. The real sinews of state and society are
after all the workers, the laborers in the field, the down
trodden ones ; they create the profit in which they ought to
share. Koheleth thus shows where his sympathies are; yet
he puts his wisdom in such a way as to minister not so much
to the embittering sense of wrong as to contentment, and
to the pride of being a solid intrinsic man. This last sen
tence is doubtless a maxim from his collection.

91. He that loveth silver. In this paragraph Koheleth
seems to be thinking again of that strife for wealth which
engenders rivalries and friction and yields no rest of soul,
11. 14-22. After all the envyings and competitions by which
men get the upper hand and the profit, yet the profit does
not satisfy; it is not an inner thing, like wisdom and know
ledge and joy. This is the bad offset of the situation, the

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 273

abundance, with income. This also is
vanity. With increase of gwxls in
crease also their consumers ; and what 95
avail to their owners save the seeing
of the eyes? Sweet is the sleep of
the laborer, whether he eat little or
much; but the surfeit of the rich
man doth not suffer him to sleep. 100
There is a sore evil I have seen

CHAP. v. 10-13.

discount that must be subtracted from all accumulations
of external wealth. — This lack of satisfaction in riches is
touched upon here, and taken up for enlarged treatment
in the Fourth Survey, 11. 1-45.

95. What. avail? To increase wealth is simply to increase
the wale of living, so that the proportion between resources
and wants remains much the same as before. A limited
amount suffices to keep life and comfort ; the rest is dead
weight, or merely something to look at.

97. Sweet in the uleep, etc. And now for the offset on
the laborer's side, the compensation which in spite of hard
ship and poverty he has. The advantage here drawn is
similar to that in praise of rest, 1. 19, but attributed to the
laborer, who is not filled with the anxieties of business.
The real comfort of life is after all with him who, in tran
quillity of soul and joy of ability, is bringing something use
ful to pass, rather than with the rich whoso wants are all
supplied.

101-110. This paragraph portrays the offset to the supre
macy of gain, when this has reached its limit and balanced
its account. In 11. 23-31, the solitariness of such supremacy

274 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

in the chan- under the sun : riches kept for the own
ers to their hurt. And those riches
perished by luckless adventure ; and

105 he begat a son, and there was nothing
in his hand. As he came forth from
his mother's womb, so shall he return,
naked, to go as he came ; and nothing
shall he receive in his toil, which he

no may carry away in his hand. And
truly, this is a sore evil, that alto-

CHAP. v. 13-16.

is described ; here the chances of losing all in the process
of getting, and the leanness of soul when all is obtained.
The riches gone, all is gone ; there is neither endowment
for the son, nor any spiritual residuum to enrich his latter
end.

103. To their hurt; Koheleth is not inveighing against
riches per se, but against riches so gained and used as to
injure the soul.

107. So shall he return, naked ; said not of every man,
but of the rich man ; with the strong implication left that
the soul ought not to return naked. His unspoken feeling is
that some use should lie

14 in blood and breath,
Which else were fruitless of their due."

110. And truly, this is a sore evil; it will be noted that the
offset, or vanity, to place over against these phases of wealth
and gain is the fact, not that they are evil but that they are
external, not intrinsic to the soul. And this may be regarded
as the great fallacy of things under the sun. Enter the life
of society and business where we will, and it reduces itself

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 275

gether as he came so must he go, —
and what profit to him that he toileth
for the wind ? All his days he eateth
in darkness, and is troubled much, us
and sickness is his, and vexation.

CHAP. v. 16, 17.

eventually to an exterior thing ; the wealth of goods or of
power is not a wealth of soul. Such a soul must return to
earth naked as it came, if all its riches are riches of the
hand. This fact may be an evil, or not ; it depends on how
the soul looks upon it. It is the kind of fact that shallow
men would remedy by imagining an immortality wherein
somehow relations will be reversed. Koheleth, however, is
not thinking of what the soul is some time to be, but of what
it is now, — of its intrinsic greatness or smallness, wealth
or poverty. And the smallness, the vanity, which he un
earths in all these courses of a crooked world is essentially
a smallness of soul. There he leaves it. He does not pro
pose a remedy beyond death ; he does not see such a rem
edy ; and we may agree with him in concluding that none
such is to be reckoned on. The soul must find its compen
sation, its yithron, apart from time and environment; and it
is such a compensation as this, an inner wealth and charac
ter, that he is steering for.

114. He eateth in darkness • not that the troubles of the
rich man are greater than those of the common lot ; but it
is unrelieved, it has nothing to compensate for all the out
lay of care and uncertainty, nor can all his wealth purchase
immunity. This is the bad offset of the situation, as applied
to him whose trust is in riches.

276 WORDS OF KOHELETH III

IV

Thesoiu- BEHOLD, what I have seen! good

good' and that is comely : to eat and to drink and

comely life .... . .. , . , ,

oi joy in to see good in all his labor which he

work and

inthepor- 120 laboreth under the sun, all the days

tlon wnlcn

Qod hath Of his iife which God hath given him ;

for this is his portion, yea, every man
to whom God hath given riches and

CHAP. v. 18, 19.

117-129. This short section not only gives the good off
set to the evils of the preceding paragraph, but lays down
the grand solution of the whole Survey. It is introduced
emotionally, as if it had come to the writer as a discovery
flashing suddenly forth from the turbid welter in which
his observations have been moving. And the " good that
is comely " is not confined to the common laborer, as in the
last named offset, 1. 98, though it is open to him first of all
as the man in the normal use of life ; it may also be the
lot of him " to whom God hath given riches and goods,"
1. 123. As to substance, it merely takes up and amplifies,
with a peculiar zest and fondness, what has already been
broached as the solution of the Surveys hitherto ; cf . Sur
vey i. 118-121 ; ii. 30-35, 67-71 ; and see note, Survey
i. 118.

120. All the days of his life; the permanent good which
Koheleth began to seek in wine and folly (Survey i. 30) he
has found in the joy that man has in labor ; and he will en
large upon the sufficingness of this later, see Survey v.
140-155.

122. This is his portion • see note on Survey i. 61.

Ill IN A CROOKED WORLD 277

goods, and hath enabled him to eat
thereof, and to obtain his portion, and 125
to rejoice in his labor, — THIS is the
gift of God. For he will not much
remember the days of his life, when
God respondeth to him in joy of heart.

CHAP. v. 19, 20.

124. And hath enabled him to eat thereof; in the next Sur
vey (1. 7 sq.) Koheleth takes up the case of the man with
" riches, and stores, and honor," whom God has not enabled
to eat thereof, and makes it the starting-point of the Sur
vey.

127. For he will not much remember ; with this sentence
Koheleth casts a glance back over the Survey, with its view
of oppressions and rivalries and follies and bafflements ;
and the grand offset that he brings against them is, — that
the soul, when God's joy is consciously in it, can forget
them all. It has risen as superior to them as if it were
already in heaven ; the crooked is made straight within.

THE FOURTH SURVEY

FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN

Concrete T I ^HERE is an evil which I have

case occa- 1,1 i , •,

sioning the I seen under the sun, and great it

Survey: . . ~ 1

possessions, is upon men : a man to whom (jrod

and no

stores, and
5 honor, and nought is lacking to his

CHAP. vi. 1, 2.

The example with which this Survey opens, suggested per
haps as a contrast to the ideal of the previous Survey, 1. 124,
is a case similar to the one given in Survey iii. 101-116 ;
only there the point was derived from the uncertainties and
miscalculations of business, and the evil was in the world of
environment; while here the defect is in the soul, which when
all is gained fails to rest in it. And this guides to the trend
of the present Survey. The Survey is the expansion of the
assertion made in the Proem, 1. 18, and illustrated concretely
by the experience of Koheleth as a king, Survey i. 63 sqq.
There is a quality in the soul which makes it too large for
its dwelling-place ; it so transcends its environment that
when this is ideally favorable, it is yet a misfit. Doubtless
this is another aspect of eternity in the heart (Survey ii. 27).
It is something, at least, to which the soul is inevitably
fated ; and in view of Koheleth's agnosticism regarding the
hereafter, a very deep and poignant, a very baffling thing.
Man's fate is to find all the objects of his striving vanity.

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 279

soul of all that he desireth ; and yet
God doth not enable him to eat
thereof, for a stranger eateth it. This
is vanity, and a sore disease this.

I
IF a man beget an hundred chil- 10 Evil oi

, , ,. ,, missing the

dren, and live many years, so that good of life.

many be the days of his years, and

CHAP. vi. 2, 3.

LINE 6. And yet God doth not enable him to eat thereof. To
eat of a thing is the Hebrew symbol of satisfaction with it ;
it thereby becomes virtually a part of the man. See note,
Survey i. 118. Not to be able to eat does not refer to being
incapacitated by illness ; it means that these things are not
soul-food, do not nourish the real man.

8. A stranger eateth it • one who has had nothing to do
with getting it. It is as fitted to an alien as to him whose
life was bound up with it. The passage is the Hebrew-
enunciation of the classical sic vos non vobis.

9. A sore disease ; all the places where Koheleth calls a
thing a malady of humanity (Survey i. 5 ; iii. 31 ; and here)
refer to a mysterious surge of manhood, pressing him as it
were to something which the needs of the present conception
of manhood are too narrow to motive ; it seems to refer to
some standard of life unknown. See notes, i. 5 ; iii. 31.

10. If a man, etc. Here are mentioned the typical Old
Testament blessings of life, — many children, long life,
things which, in the absence of the motive of immortality,
were accounted the supreme good.

12. And his soul be not satisfied j the point of the asser-

280 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

his soul be not satisfied with good, —
nay, even though no tomb were his

15 to dread, — I say, better than he
were an untimely birth. For in
vanity it came, and in darkness it
goeth, and with darkness is its name
covered over. The sun also hath it

20 not seen, nor hath it known aught.
There is rest for this, more than for
the other.

CHAP. vi. 3-5.

tion is thus centred in the soul. Any possession which does
not go to its enrichment is mere vanity ; and a life without
ultimate peace of soul, a life with a never attained goal, is
worse than no life at all. Koheleth lays out all his strength
in maintaining this.

14. Nay, even though, etc., literally, " and even a tomb
be not his." This seems not to refer to the calamity of dy
ing without regular burial, such as was so deprecated by
the ancients, for that sense would take away from the cli
max which D3 (even) evidently aims to cap; it refers rather
to the supposition that no death at all came in to interrupt
this prosperity, or to be in chilling prospect as a discount
from the man's felicity. Even a prospect of unending exist
ence would but aggravate the case to the soul that has no
inner satisfaction.

21. Rest for this ; the rest of vacuity if not of fulfilled
desire. Job longs for the same rest of not having been
at all ; Job iii. 16. Koheleth dwells, however, on that
negation of being with even more poetic zest than does
Job ; the fervor of his contrast thus intensifying his por-

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 281

And though one live a thousand
years twice told, and see not good, —
are not all going to one place ? 25

CHAP. vi. 6.

trayal of the utmost significance of being " satisfied with
good."

23. And though, etc. Koheleth has supposed a life from
which the dread of death is removed (1. 14) ; now he re
turns to the thought of the end which must eventually come,
however late, to put an end to the life which has not seen
good.

25. Are not all going to one place ? — as much as to imply,
if you do not get satisfaction here on earth, and in the life
which is your portion now, where else can you look for it ?
The place that men reckon on hereafter has no power to
give satisfaction. If the present environment will not give
it, we have no more certain data for an environment that
will. The " one place " that Koheleth has in mind is the
one place of Survey ii. 61, in which, so far as appears, not
only wicked and good, wise and foolish, but even man and
beast, are brought to an absolute equality of doom. He
brings up the thought of it here, however, not to centre
attention on the blankness of the hereafter, but to keep men
from missing the good of life now ; he is thus using his
agnosticism as a healthy motive and incentive to noble liv
ing. It is like Omar Khayydm's plea (Rubaiyat, Ixiii.), —

" Oh threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise !
One thing at least is certain — This Life flies ;

One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies."

It is something, it is much, in the presence of those who,
as seems to him, are feeding fancy and starving energy on

282 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

The hunger All the labor of man is for his
for what Is

more than mouth, yet also is the soul not filled,

meat. ' J

For what advantage hath the sage
over the fool? what the poor who

CHAP. vi. 7, 8.

speculative philosophizings (cf. Survey ii. 58, 63, and notes),
to emphasize so sturdily the idea that satisfaction is not to
be had in postponing the good of life to a somewhere and
somewhen beyond.

26. For his mouth ; this is Koheleth's pregnant way of
stating the phenomenon which, perhaps more than all else,
occasioned the writing of his book, prompting his initial
question, Proem, 1. 3, " What profit hath man in all his
labor ? " At first sight it seems to fill the world full :
work on the one side, wage (which reduces itself to food)
on the other, a kind of completed circuit, the second half
just answering to the first, and no apparent surplusage. It
is the significance of life, so far as the body is concerned.

27. The soul not filled ; in these words is expressed that
mighty irony of fate of which Koheleth would have man
take advantage. To say the soul cannot be filled with eating
is as much as to say the animal life, the life of the senses,
is not its true life. But more than this. There is a soul-
hunger so much greater that even the difference of sage
and fool, poor and obese rich, does not count in relation ;
much as the distinction between palace and cottage does
not count as viewed from the mountain-tops. Thus we
are brought face to face with the mysterious greatness of
the manhood soul ; man is fated, we may say, to be greater
than the utmost measurements of a mere earthly state can
compass.

29. What the poor who knoweth ; in Koheleth's view it is

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 283

knoweth how to walk before the liv~ ao
ing ? Better is the sight of the eyes
than wandering of soul. This also is
vanity, and a chase after wind.

CHAP. vi. 8, 9.

evidently the poor, or perhaps we may say those who must
earn their living, who are in best position to see life in its
true proportions and live it honorably. This is of a piece
with his regarding the laboring man as the most comfort
ably situated, Survey iii. 97, and as the real strength of the
body politic, ib. 88.

31. Better is the sight of the eyes • with this maxim, either
from his collection or, as seems to me not unlikely, composed
for the present occasion, Koheleth sums up his thought,
bringing it to the focus that he has had in mind all along,
namely, of the intrinsic soul. In Survey iii. 96 "the seeing
of the eyes " is regarded as a very insignificant thing, con
sidered as the residuum which increase of riches can yield ;
still, small as it is, it furnishes a centre of concrete fact, of
solid reality. The " wandering of soul," which Koheleth sets
over against this as inferior, seems to refer to vague specur
lation, some fanciful fad which in his view tends to drift
men away from their moorings. He writes as if his age
were deeply infected with something like this. To him, on
the contrary, the intrinsic soul, or as we should say, a formed
and centred character, is the all-important thing ; not to
have this is to be in the company of those vain souls who
chase after wind. It is as if he said, Have a soul centred and
at home, even though it have only concrete fact on which
to feed ; do not wander off from the verifiable sphere of the
senses and the reason. This is the true scientific attitude,
as we have described in the Introductory Study, pp. 9-11.

284 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

Themea- That which is, long ago was its

sure that .

fate has 35 name called, and it was known that

man is man ; nor can he contend with
Him that is mightier than he. For
that there are words many, multiply-

CHAP. vi. 10, 11.

34. Long ago was its name called ; this takes up a new
aspect of that to which man is fated ; we may entitle it the
measure which fate has taken of the world and of man.
" That which is " includes both ; it is cosmic. The name,
in Hebrew thinking, is what describes the thing ; to call the
name is to designate its fixed and intrinsic nature. Every
thing must move in the lines long appointed to it ; man
with the rest.

35. That man is man ; the word used for man is Adam,
the name that connotes his earthly origin and his earthly
limitation. That is the name by which he was long ago
called.

36. Nor can he contend; to contend with Him that is
mightier than he would be equivalent to seeking a change
of state or principle of living ; like beating against the bars
of a cage. Koheleth feels the limitation, the imprisonment ;
but it is characteristic of his philosophy to say, There it is,
unchangeable ; make the best of it. — This same thought
of contending with God has been worked out in the Book
of Job ; see Job ix. 3 ; xl. 2.

38. Words many, multiplying vanity ; from the thought of
this fixedness of man's intrinsic state Koheleth's mind re
curs to the " dreams and vanities and words many " of Sur
vey iii. 80 ; see note there. The implication would seem to
be that this wordiness of his age has tendency to produce
wandering of soul ; loosening men's hold, so to say, on the

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 285

ing vanity, — what profit therefore to
man ? For who knoweth what is good 40
for man in life, all the days of his
vain life which he spendeth like a
shadow ? For who shall report to man

CHAP. vi. 11, 12.

demands of their intriiisic self, while the soul is launched
out iuto oceans of vague and vain speculation. In his view
nothing can come of it, — no profit, no fixed and verifiable
result. That this refers to prevalent vaticinations about the
hereafter, in other words to prevailing discussions on im
mortality, seems evident from the question asked in 1. 43.
It is notable that in Survey vi. 69 the same conjunction of
voluble words with the question of the hereafter is made ;
see Introductory Study, pp. 43 sqq.

40. What is good for man in life • the life here and the
life beyond are not dissociated ; to solve one is to solve
the other. It is as if he had said, The problem of the
present life, vain and shadowy as it is, is baffling enough,
without middling with a future existence. Find what is
good for man here, and you have the only sure data for
there ; and until you find this life, the other must remain
dark.

42. Like a shadow ; Koheleth is fighting against pursu
ing future shadows ; and here his motive, which constitutes
the deep pathos of his book, comes to light. His agnosti
cism of the future is equally an agnosticism of the present,
as comes out 1. 40. The present life itself is a shadow ;
Koheleth has not reached the solid landing-place of life
from which to construct his horoscope of things future ; he
is sadly aware that neither life nor immortality has come
to light.

286 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

what shall be after him under the
45 sun?

II
BETTER is a good name than goodly

CHAP. vi. 12,-vii. 1.

44. Under the sun ; here, again, the life on earth and the
life in some region beyond are not dissociated. To know
the future of one is as hard as to know the future of the
other. Wherever he speaks of the hereafter, it is so ; he
recognizes no discontinuity at death ; compare Survey ii.
71 ; v. 53 ; vi. 70. What he is concerned with is the life
intrinsic and permanent ; compare Survey i. 34, and note
there. The sturdy implication he would leave, therefore, is
that the wise attitude toward the unknown future is to be
ready for it and meet it as it comes. " He who would be a
great soul in future must be a great soul now," Emerson
says.

46-80. With this connotation in mind, as it would seem,
Koheleth sets himself in the coming section to draw a se
ries of better alternatives in the interests of soul-building ;
each, as will be observed, centring in some element whereby
the soul is strengthened or beautified. That these alterna
tives give the melioristic, not the optimistic, outlook com
ports with what Koheleth has just said about the shadowed
outlook in life ; it is only a relative better, not an absolute
best, that he can see ; compare note, Survey iii. 32 sqq.
But all is given in the intuitive sense that the strong and
wise soul is in the best condition to meet its fate, whatever
this may be ; the way from shadows to light lies in that di
rection. " Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul."

46. A good name ; perhaps the first of these alternatives,
which are given in maxim form, takes its suggestion from

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 287
nard ; and the day of death than the Better aiter-

T P , T . . ! natives that

day or one s birtn. make lor

-o , ,, , „ soul-Toulld-

Better to go to the house of mourn- ing.
ing than to the house of feasting ; be- 50

CHAP. vn. 1, 2.

1. 35 above ; as much as to say, the name stamped upon the
man long ago, as indicative of his intrinsic nature, is more
than the superficial repute, however fair. In the original
the adjective good is omitted. — Than goodly nard ; in this
translation an attempt is made to preserve a little of the
word-play of the original, — shem and shemen.

47. The day of death is regarded as superior to the day
of birth, not because it is the end of life, but because it is
the wisest and ripest time of life, the culmination of the
growth for which life is given. The assertion is in the same
sentiment as Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra : —

" Grow old along with me !
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made."

50. Than . . . the house of feasting • Koheleth, to whom
has been attributed a strain of Epicureanism, is as unfriendly
to idle feasting (compare 1. 56 below, and Survey vi. 77-79)
as he is friendly to eating and drinking (Survey i. 119 ; ii.
33; iii. 118; v. 92, 140). Nor are the two at all inconsistent
with each other. He praises eating and drinking as they
connote man's joy in his work and his God-given portion;
and at the same time he depreciates feasting as an expres
sion of empty-headed mirth and folly. The fact that his
antipathy to fools is roused alike by wordy discussions and
by feasting suggests that the idle speculations which so ir
ritate him have become a fad of the wealthier and aristocra
tic though less thoughtful classes. One is inclined also to

288 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

cause that is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.

Better is sorrow than laughter ; for

by sadness of face the heart is made

55 fair. The heart of the wise is in the

house of mourning ; but the heart of

fools in the house of merriment.

CHAP. vii. 2-4.

think that the sunny gayety of the Greek mind and senti
ment which is leavening the age is what moves Koheleth to
set up the praise of austerity here as a counterweight ; it is
in his view a time when the more solemn elements of life
should have their due.

51. The end of all mankind ; a parallel to the day of
death in 1. 47 ; the end when the award of life is made up.
Thus, contrary to the house of revelry, the house of mourn
ing furnished an element of soul-building, the living lay it
to heart.

53. Than laughter ; Koheleth is evidently so irritated
by the lightness of life around him that he is suspicious
even of laughter, as if it must necessarily be the accom
paniment of an empty head ; compare 1. 60, below. He is
revealing his old fogy mood, much as he did in Survey iii.
68-82.

54. The heart is made fair ; this is the point with Kohe
leth; it is the better furnishing of heart and character, the
cultivation of manhood.

55. Of the wise . . . of fools ; thus he has converged his
precepts to his favorite topic of fools; and one recognizes
herein the same class of men who earlier have brought their
ill-timed garrulity and levity into the house of God ; Sur
vey iii. 58.

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 289

Better to hear a wise man's rebuke
than for one to hear the song of fools.
For as the crackling of thorns under eo
the pot, so is the laughter of a fool.

This also is a vanity : that extor
tion besotteth a wise man ; and the
heart is corrupted by a bribe.

Better is the issue of a matter than es
its beginning.

CHAP. vii. 5-8.

60. For as the crackling of thorns ; there is a word-play
between the word for " thorns " (sirim) and the word for
"pot " (sir); which, however, cannot well be reproduced in
English ; nor is there call for elaborateness of wording, as
the simile makes its way by its own felicity.

62. This also is a vanity • it seems better to connect this
clause with the succeeding than, as is ordinarily done, with
the maxim before. The saying, probably inserted from Ko-
heleth's collection, is not, like the others, in the form of
an alternative; but it demonstrates its fitness here because
Koheleth, occupied with what makes for soul-culture, is
correspondingly sensitive to what makes against or im
pairs it. And both extortion and bribe-taking he views as
each in its way invading the integrity of the soul ; the one
by besotting, that is, making silly or foolish, the wise ; the
other by disintegrating, crumbling, the true manhood of the
heart.

65. Better is the issue; this gives in general terms the
same truth that is in Koheleth's mind in praising the day
of death (1. 47) and the house of mourning as the end of
all mankind (1. 49). Although man cannot see to the end

290 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

Better is the patient of spirit than
the haughty of spirit. Haste not in
thy spirit to be angry ; for anger
70 resteth in the bosom of fools.

Say not, " How was it that the

former days were better than these ? "

for not out of wisdom dost thou ask

concerning this.

75 Good is wisdom, as good as an in-

CHAP. vii. 8-11.

(Survey ii. 30), yet wisdom dictates making up our plans
with reference to their outcome and permanence.

67. The patient of spirit ; this we may regard as the
ground virtue of the book, the calm self-control and wis
dom of endurance which Koheleth would set over against
the labor, the oppressions, the untowardness, the mysteries,
of his world. It is the comprehensive better alternative.
Its opposite, anger, has already been stigmatized by Eliphaz
as the ruin of the foolish man ; see Job v. 2.

71. Say not, etc. The thought of the laudatores temporis
acti here seems to have been suggested by the " anger " of
the preceding maxim, which in Koheleth's depressed and
spiritless age may have taken the shape of inciting men to
emulation of the more heroic times of old. The form of the
question, " How was it ? " takes the main thing, that the
former times were better, for granted ; and it is this main
thing that Koheleth would by implication call into question ;
that is not settled yet. If anger in general is a foolish trait,
that form of anger which would indict a whole age is not of
wisdom.

75. Good is wisdom ; the last in this series of better alter-

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 291

heritance, and a profit to them that
see the sun. For the refuge of wis
dom is as the refuge of money ; but
the advantage of knowledge is that
wisdom quickeneth its possessor. so

III
CONTEMPLATE the work of God ;

CHAP. vii. 11-13.

natives, and perhaps intended as the best. The alternative
comes out by first naming wherein wisdom and money are
alike a refuge (literally a shade}, and then naming the point
wherein wisdom is superior. Wisdom is an inner thing ; it
strikes into the life, it vitalizes; this cannot be said of
money.

79. The advantage • the often-used word yithron, profit,
surplusage. Here, then, is another detail in answer to the
initial question, " What profit ? " It is natural to associate
profit with wages, reward, money ; Koheleth is seeking the
profit which is real, as being an element of life, and in wis
dom he finds an element of soul-building. — Of knowledge ;
in using the two nearly synonymous words knowledge and
wisdom, Koheleth seems to have in mind, so to say, the static
and dynamic aspects of one endowment. Knowledge, as a
possession, parallels with money; as an applied thing, work
ing to quicken, it is wisdom.

" A higher hand must make her mild,
If all be not in vain; and guide
Her footsteps, moving side by aide
With wisdom, like the younger child."

81-102. In this concluding section Koheleth deduces the
solution for a soul confronting the fated mysteries of life

292 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

The soin- for who can straighten what he hath

ance'd sanity made crooked ? In the day of good

of mind, In ..

utnim<me be in good heart ; and in the evil

paratus.

85 day consider : — this also hath God

made, over against that, to the end

CHAP. vii. 13, 14.

and concerned both to build itself up in vital wisdom and
to maintain its integrity. Its resource is, so far as it can,
to discount the case in its observed mystery and preserve
a balance and sanity such as is expressed in the phrase in
utrumque paratus. With a soul seeking the best elements
of upbuilding, this is the one wise attitude.

81. Contemplate the work of God ; for the purpose of pro
pounding the soul's attitude, Koheleth recurs to what has
already been said about the work of God, Survey ii. 35-39,
and about the crooked and the straight, Survey i. 10-12.
The implication is that life is to be made livable not by
changing what is without — an impossible thing — but by
adjusting what is within the soul to it.

84. Be in good heart, that is, in good courage or cheer ;
literally, " In the day of good be in good," a play on the
word good. For the manhood soul Koheleth advocates first
of all confidence in the world order, spontaneous committal
to things as they are.

85. This also hath God made ; nor does this confidence
ignore the evils of life ; it accepts them as the work of
the same God, to be reckoned with as part of the life's
assets.

86. To the end that, etc. Further still, it discerns a pur
pose in this very mystery of good and evil ; in Koheleth's
view it is positively better that man should not know the
future, or mete the bounds of good and evil in God's deal-

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 293

that man should not find out anything
after him.

All this have I seen in the days of

CHAP. vn. 14, 15.

ings. It is not intended, it would not be best, that man
should spend this existence in dodging or manipulating a
calculable hereafter. So to do would lead to discounting
the approaching evil, or banking on the approaching good,
and thus living a life of opportunism and expediency. From
such commercial ideal Koheleth would throw man back on
his intrinsic soul, which he is to enlarge and enrich without
reference to the future, building character here and now.
This is doubtless the practical working of that strain of
" eternity in the heart " which exists, though without vatici
nation of the beginning and the end of things ; see Sur
vey ii. 26. Koheleth has already traced educational pur
poses in God's mysterious ways ; his eternal work being
designed to produce reverence, Survey ii. 39 ; and the veil
ing of judgment being designed to throw man back on the
animal environment in which his life's problem is to be
worked out, Survey ii. 52.

89. In the days of my vanity ; a variation of phrase inti
mating that what follows belongs to the same category of
vanities that he is concerned to enumerate. The observa
tion about righteous and wicked, which is repeated, Survey
v. 84, is a traverse of the old wisdom philosophy which
has already been made by Job ; see Job xxi. 7 ; xxiv. 22, 23 ;
see also Psalm Ixxiii. 3. It may be taken here, then, as an
acknowledged truth, not needing argument. To bring it
up here amounts to saying that on mere legalistic lines, on
systems of justice, or of rewards and penalties, we cannot
interpret the world, we cannot run the life of man into such
a rigid and calculable mould. If we survive or if we per-

294 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

90 my vanity : there is a righteous man
who perisheth in his righteousness,
and there is a wicked man who sur-
viveth in his wickedness. Be not too
righteous, and play not the sage to

CHAP. vn. 15, 16.

ish, then, it must be on some principle not yet apparent.
Thus, albeit negatively and dimly, Koheleth is reaching
out after a broader and freer interpretation of life than his
Mosaic era offers.

93-98. The way these precepts connect with the preceding
seems to be by the implication that a decrepit law which
has lost the power to execute itself may be treated with free
dom, used with a discrimination and mastery which evince
that it was made for the manhood soul, not the soul for it.
The soul in its wisdom is to judge what is " too righteous "
and " too wicked ; " its wisdom is to have the casting vote.

93. Be not too righteous; if this is to be interpreted as
parallel to the next precept, which has a reflexive sense
(" make not thyself wise "), it would seem to refer to a
similar making one's self righteous, that is, to a. put-on right
eousness, or perhaps to a righteousness tending to the for
mal and mechanical, as among the Pharisees of a later
time. One is inclined to think Koheleth is warning against
the ways of the Hasidim, or pious ones, of his time, whose
zeal for the law, in this "night of legalism," may well
have assumed this appearance. To a man not tuned to the
pious key, like Koheleth, the sanctimonious and hypocritical
tendency of such rigid legalism must have been repellant.

94. Play not the sage; in this phrasing an attempt is
made to reproduce the reflexive sense ; see preceding note.
A righteousness or a wisdom that is put on, like a piece of

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 295

excess ; wherefore wilt thou undo 95
thyself? Be not too wicked either,
and be not a fool ; wherefore wilt thou
die before thy time ?

CHAP. vn. 16, 17.

stage-acting, is not the spontaneous expression of the indi
vidual self.

95. Undo thyself , that is, destroy the free play of the
genuine self, as well as the power of the virtue itself, by
making it forced and artificial.

96. Be not too wicked ; as much as to say, if you are not
to be too righteous, do not cast the bridle wholly away and
run into excess on the other side. Would this leave the
implication open that one may be moderately wicked, if
one tempers it by wisdom ? It is precarious, perhaps, to
conclude so ; but so much, at least, we may credit to Kohe-
leth's thought : — Let the law of your being be so in you,
and rest upon you so easily, that your spirit may be free
to use it, and not merely be used or enslaved by it. Ven
ture on life, whether toward righteousness or wickedness, iu
masterfulness of wisdom. The accomplished musician knows
what discords he may make, and he can venture on things
that a pedant would condemn. " We find in military mat
ters an Oliver Cromwell who will make every mistake
known to strategy and yet win all his battles." Some such
attitude as this, I think, Koheleth would have men main
tain toward the laws of life ; be so master of them and of
themselves that obedience is freedom and joy. This is a
hint of that spiritual liberty which in a later era could say,
" All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought
under the power of any ; " 1 Corinthians vi. 12.

97. Be not a fool ; this precept connects closely with the

296 WORDS OF KOHELETH IV

It is good that thou lay hold on
100 this, and from that, too, refrain not
thy hand, for he that feareth God
shall come forth of them all.

CHAP. vn. 18.

one before; as much as to say, If you are going to take
liberty with the law, do not make a fool affair of it. Do
not wallow, as it were, in wickedness, as if it were your
nature ; subject your dealings with it to wisdom. Koheleth
has already shown what it is to obey this precept, when, in
laying hold on pleasure and folly, Survey i. 32, his heart
was all the while " guiding by wisdom ; " and when, in all
his audacious dealings with worldliness, i. 56, his " wisdom
stood by " him.

98. Die before thy time • Koheleth is thinking not only of
those brutish and stupid kinds of wickedness which invade
the body and shorten life, but of that fatuous baseness
which kills the soul and makes " in more of life true life
no more."

99. On this . . . from that ; this can only mean, be free
in spirit to test life on all sides ; live life with eyes open
and heart unfettered.

101. He that feareth God • a strong enough safeguard to
offset all these daring precepts. The fear of God, as an
inner prophylactic, makes man as it were immune before
all the uncertainties of the world and fate, and among all
the pitfalls of law. The fear of God is Koheleth's universal
solvent. It is man's saving attitude in the presence of God's
overwhelming work, Survey ii. 39 ; it is his substantial
support in the presence of the world's dreams and wordy
vanities, iii. 81 ; it is his guarantee of good to offset the

IV FATE, AND THE INTRINSIC MAN 297

rampant presumption of the wicked, v. 77 ; it is the end of
the matter when all is heard, Epilogue, 19.

" In utrumque paratus, then. Be ready for anything —
that perhaps is wisdom. Give ourselves up, according to
the hour, to confidence, to skepticism, to optimism, to irony,
and we may be sure that at certain moments at least we
shall be with the truth. . . . Good humor is a philosophic
state of mind ; it seems to say to Nature that we take her
no more seriously than she takes us." These words of Re-
nan are quite in the spirit of this Survey ; though Koheleth
has infinitely more dignity, and deepens his brave good
humor by the interest that he has primarily at heart, the
interest of soul-building.

THE FIFTH SURVEY

AVAILS OF WISDOM

The thesis of "TT"TISDOM giveth strength to
the Survey. * /m '

W

the wise man, more than ten
chieftains that are in the city.

CHAP. vn. 19.

Wisdom, assumed by Koheleth at the beginning (Sur
vey i. 3) as the guide of his quest, has thus far answered
every demand, and though itself stretching beyond explo
ration (i. 20), has proved itself polarly superior to folly
(i. 74), and is recognized as a main element in the intrinsic
furnishing of manhood (i. 125). Set over against money
as a practical support of life, it has this point of superi
ority, that it is an inner vitalizer (iv. 80). It is time now
to take up more definitely the study of wisdom itself, and
especially its avails, as applied to the emergencies of life
and destiny.

For the significance of wisdom, as an asset of life, see
Survey i. 3, note.

LINE 1. The first sentence is a kind of proposition, or
thesis, for the whole Survey : it sets before us the general
truth that it is to wisdom, rather than to warlike or civic
might, that we are to look for real strength and support in
life. The same praise of wisdom and of the sage is repeated
(1. 35) at the beginning of the section which, after the un
toward elements are reckoned, takes up the positive avails.

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 299

I

FOR that there is not a righteous The unto
ward side :

man on earth, who doeth good and sin- 5 wisdom is

not in casual

neth not, — give not thy mind, there- words ; ls
fore to all words that are spoken, lest JSfedel)as"
thou hear thine own servant cursing

CHAP. vii. 20, 21.

4-34. This section considers the discount or negative side
of the subject, introducing it, as is usual with Koheleth's
generalizations, with a concrete and near-by instance.

4. For that, etc. It seems better, as is here done, to read
this remark as appended to the next, giving a reason for
not paying heed to casual words. That men are universally
imperfect does not need, at this age of wisdom philosophy,
to be propounded as a new truth ; Job's friends, and Job
himself, have already insisted upon it as an irrefragable
truth. To take it as reason for the next here amounts to
saying, Do not demand more from men's words than is in
man's soul ; do not expect perfect wisdom, or perfect con
sistency, from a sinful nature.

7. Lest thou hear • the instance of the servant's cursing
is taken, it would seem, as commonest and nearest home ;
as much as to say, If you call men to account for all their
words, you cannot stir out of doors without finding occa
sion for censure. If this is Koheleth's way of saying no
man is a hero to his valet, he is also as ready as the
moderns in taking his share of the blame ; in cursing his
master, the valet does merely what the master equally
tends to do. Koheleth is covertly reading himself a lesson
here ; he has been irritated by the babble of words around
him (Survey iii. 66, 77, and notes), but instead of inveigh-

300 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

thee. For many times, also, as thy
10 heart knoweth, thou too hast cursed

others.

All this have I tried by wisdom ; I

said, Oh, let me be wise ! — and it

was far from me. Far off, that which
15 is ; and deep, deep — who shall find it ?

CHAP. vn. 22-24.

ing against them as folly, seems resolved here to remem
ber that he himself may be subject to similar failings.

9. As thy heart knoweth ; Koheleth's own insight, the
advantage of which he is ready to give to the servant, tells
him that casual words, a hasty, ill-considered curse, do not
surely represent the man ; you cannot measure a man's wis
dom or character by them.

12. All this ; first of all what is given, or suggested, in
the preceding paragraph ; but also, perhaps, all the fore
going problems and experiences of life. If you cannot find
wisdom in words that are spoken, where can you find it ?
Too obviously, wisdom is far to seek.

14. That which is; the reality, the true inwardness of
things, below all seeming and all disguise. Words may
be weak, or hypocritical, or corrupt ; you cannot assuredly
gather wisdom from them. The course of action we adopt
does not always issue in success ; nor is the success itself
a satisfaction. There is nothing yet revealed to Koheleth
which unveils the secret of the permanent and the central.
The best that can be said of him is that his heart is set in
that direction, ready to appropriate the truth as it comes to
light ; but that no more can yet be said points to the essen
tial pathos and irony of his book ; see Introductory Study,
p. 37.

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 301

I turned, I and my heart, to know
and explore and prove wisdom and
true appraisal; and to know that
wickedness is fatuity, and that folly

CHAP. vii. 25.

16. / and my heart • Koheleth's quaint way of saying
that he enlisted his whole nature, not intellect alone but
heart and life too, in the search for wisdom. He is a keen
student, but also sympathetic, feeling the whole burden of
the world problem.

18. True appraisal; the word thus translated is quite
characteristic of this Survey ; see also 1. 27 (account) and
1. 34 (devices, a word from the same root, though not quite
identical). It seems to refer to the judgment or estimate
formed from a thorough canvass of all the elements of a
case ; or perhaps what logicians call the working hypothe
sis. It is a word that is naturally needed in Koheleth's
vocabulary of induction ; compare Introductory Study,
p. 176.

18. That wickedness is fatuity, etc. This identifying of
wickedness with fatuity and folly with madness is the fun
damental thesis of the wisdom philosophy ; but it seems to
have become a kind of academic theory, it has lost its grip
on the inner life. Koheleth subjects it here to renewed
examination, opens the question anew. This is in accord
ance with his verifying and inductive attitude ; he will
take nothing, not even bis venerable body of wisdom, for
granted. At the same time he is not only seeking a more
solid basis of estimate, but rescuing the theory from the
cold-blooded, intellectual, academic tone into which it has
lapsed ; to take in all the elements of the appraisal, the
heart also must speak (see note, 1. 16).

302 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

20 is madness. And bitterer than death
I find the woman whose heart is
snares and nets, whose hands are fet
ters. He that pleaseth God shall es
cape from her ; but the sinner shall

25 be caught by her. Lo, this have I

CHAP. vii. 26, 27.

20. Bitterer than death; the concrete case of woman, so
dwelt upon in Proverbs, is first brought up ; as if his
thought were, A man whose wisdom suffices against this
subtlest of temptations may regard his life as fortified for
anything. If the warning in Proverbs against the strange
woman is a young man's warning, this may be regarded as
the seasoned, well-grounded, and therefore weightier warn
ing of elderly life.

21. Heart . . . snares and nets ; hands . . .fetters; here, as
in Proverbs, it is not the sensuality that most disturbs the
writer ; it is the enslavement and disintegration of soul.
Nor is it, apparently, the strange woman, as such, that he
has in mind ; it is that woman nature which, encountered
apart from wisdom, lays such subtle yet fatal power on
man through the emotional and affectional nature. Wo
man is the type embodiment of a life in which the affec
tions have predominance of the unimpassioned intellect ;
when, therefore, this latter yields control, the result is disas
trous to man, and he finds himself ensnared and fettered.

23. He that pleaseth God is Koheleth's name for the man
whose life, lived freely and self-directively, yet evinces its
integrity and Tightness ; compare Survey i. 124, 128. This
is already identified also with fearing God ; compare Sur
vey iv. 101, and note. The favor and fear of God are the
only stay in the inner conflicts of life.

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 303

found, saith Koheleth, adding one to
another to arrive at the account ;
which even yet my soul seeketh, and
I have not found : one man, out of a
thousand, have I found, but a woman 30
among all these have I not found.

CHAP. VH. 27, 28.

28. Which even yet my soul seeketh ; would Koheleth by
this periphrasis intimate that the daring assertion that he
is about to make is still under advisement ?

29. One man . . . but a woman . . . not. No assertion of
Koheleth's has incurred such criticism as this ; and in itself
it is sufficient to drive a French consciousness, like that of
Renan, into the imagination of all sorts of Parisian intrigues
on Koheleth's part, and the subsequent disillusion and dis
gust. There is no warrant for this. Koheleth's conclusion
is merely the verdict forced upon him by the test of wis
dom, with its judicial, scientific assessment of life. To find
wisdom in absolute control is rare, as rare as one in a thou
sand among men, whose temperament is judicial ; among
women, whose judgments are so much more swayed by
intuition and emotion, it is at least one rarer. Between
intellect and emotion, intellect, in a life devoted to wisdom,
must have the casting vote ; and to say it has the casting
vote more rarely among women than among men is hardly
more than to recognize the fundamental distinction of the
feminine temperament. Koheleth is not venting a personal
spleen, nor drawing an indictment against the sex ; and he
who scents an unsavory scandal here makes exposure of
himself. If in a cold, legalistic era, like the one in which
Koheleth moved, woman fails to attain the highest definition
of her mission, it is yet interesting to note that in the more

304 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

This only, see, only this have I found,
that God made man upright, and they
have sought out many devices.

II
The positive 35 WHO is like the wise man ? and

avails:

CHAP. vii. 29, vni. 1.

perfect era of grace and truth, her true mission appears ;
consider how Jesus acknowledged it, Matthew xxvi. 13,
and how, in the gracious ministries of love, she is far in
advance of man.

33. God made man upright, etc. This is Koheleth's sum
mary of the untoward side, made up from examination of
the subtlest and most potent forms of evil allurement. It
portrays what is natural to a manhood moving consciously
in the domain of unchosen law, and not yet aware of the
highest spiritual values. If a man so situated cannot re
nounce obligation to his law, his next impulse is to accom
modate it, interpret it, so that his obedience to it may follow
the line of least resistance. All that he can evade, in his
own self-interest, he will. And this, Koheleth says, is what
man has done with his own human nature. He has " sought
out many devices," which have so obscured, interpreted
away, evaded the law of his being, that he comes danger
ously near perverting his very fundamental nature. And
this, in making up the avails of wisdom, is to be reckoned
on the discount side.

35. Who is like the wise man ? With this question Kohe
leth resumes the positive side of his inquiry, the net avails
intimated at the beginning of the Survey. He takes up this
side now with a kind of augmented emphasis, as much as
to imply, In spite of the grievous discounts and debase-

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 305

who, like him, knoweth the meaning wisdom
of a thing ? A man's wisdom lighteth

of udgment.
CHAP. vni. 1.

merits of wisdom, it is with the wise man, if with any one,
that the solution of life is to be found.

36. The meaning of a thing • Koheleth has found " that
which is," the underlying reality of things, far off and
deep, 1. 14, above. But here it is the wise man who comes
nearest to it ; it is directed wisdom, not instinct, that is
to be resorted to. Perhaps this knowing the meaning of
things, on the part of the wise man, is thought of also as
contrasted to the little whittling devices of the generality
of men. It requires only a small mind to evade by little
subterfuges ; the larger mind, the wise man's, is not only
above such things, but deeper than they.

37. Lighteth up his face; the transfiguring power of
mind, thought, character, which though not the highest
spiritual effect, is real and potent as far as it goes. The
following, from Stevenson's Inland Voyage, may be worth
citing here : " To be even one of the outskirters of art,
leaves a fine stamp on a man's countenance. I remember
once dining with a party in the inn at Chateau London.
Most of them were unmistakable bagmen ; others well-to-
do peasantry ; but there was one young fellow in a blouse,
whose face stood out from among the rest surprisingly. It
looked more finished ; more of the spirit looked out through
it ; it had a living, expressive air, and you could see that
his eyes took things in. My companion and I wondered
greatly who and what he could be. It was fair time in
Chateau Landon, and when we went along to the booths,
we had our question answered ; for there was our friend
busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. He was a wan
dering violinist."

306 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

up his face, and the hardness of his

countenance is changed.

Counsel to 40 My counsel is, keep the command
powers that of the king, and that on account of
though arw- the oath of God. Haste not thou to

trary ;

go from his presence ; stand not out

in an evil matter ; for all that he pur-

45 poseth he will do. For the king's

CHAP. viii. 1-4.

38. The hardness ; the German translation of this is
Roheit, rawness. It seems to refer partly to that vacant
look of ignorance, which gazes and sees no meaning in
things, partly to the stolid and crude look of one who
brings no thought to bear on life, has never learned to think.
By becoming a creature of large discourse, looking before
and after, man first of all transfigures himself.

40. My counsel is, — the original is simply " I, — keep
the command," etc.

42. The oath of God ; whether this means the coronation
oath on the part of the monarch, or the oath of allegiance
on the part of the subject, comes to the same thing. The
king, by virtue of his office, is one to be obeyed ; obedience
is not a personal but a state affair. It is practical wisdom,
even in a despot-ridden land, to conform to the established
order of things, and obey the office if not the man. The
powers that be are ordained of God.

42. To go from his presence, as a sign of anger or rebel
lion.

45. He will do ; it is as incumbent on the king, by virtue
of his office, to be firm in his purposes, even apart from
their reasonableness, as it is on the subject to obey him.
He represents permanence, established-ness ; his decrees

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 307

word is power, and who shall say to
him, " What doest thou ? " He that
keepeth the commandment shall know
no evil thing ; and a wise man's heart
will recognize time and judgment. so

For time and judgment there is,

CHAP. vin. 4-6.

are the court of appeal, and must be bowed to as final.
Loyalty to government is a dictate of wisdom.

48. Shall know no evil thing ; law is not made for the right
eous but for the wicked ; see I Timothy i. 9. By keeping
the command one avoids collisions, keeps on the safe side.

49. A wise man's heart • such counsel as this is made not
merely as the expression of a cowardly or depressed spirit ;
it is the utterance of wisdom, it adapts itself to circum
stances. In wisdom the spirit itself is enlisted ; it conforms
itself voluntarily, even to what it cannot help, and thus
makes itself partner in the regime of law by which it is
encompassed.

50. Time and judgment ; that is, the fit occasion of things
and the fitting estimate of things. One mark of wisdom is
tact ; it knows what is right but also what is expedient,
what is practical as well as what is true. This whole para
graph is a plea for that kind of wisdom which consists in
adjustment to actual affairs.

61. Time and judgment there is; a reiteration of the fun
damental assertion already made in the Second Survey, 11.
49, 50. Koheleth is sure, from the very constitution of the
world and the times, that a time of solution as well as a
time of puzzles is due ; it is with this idea that he ends
the whole book, Epilogue, 1. 21. To recognize such junc
tures, in the concrete affairs of life, is the office of wisdom.

308 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

waiting for to every purpose, — though the evil

the time * • i • T?

whenjudg- or man is great upon mm. .bor no
ment shall

appear, one knoweth what shall be ; for after

55 what manner it shall be, who shall

CHAP. vm. 6, 7.

62. Though the evil of man • a recognition of the discounts
that he has been recounting, 11. 4-34 ; which, in their accu
mulation of " many devices," have really wrought to im
pair the clear insight of wisdom. It requires an effort of
philosophy to maintain the assertion that there is time and
judgment, for things do not look that way.

53. For no one knoweth ; the amplification here following,
representing as it does a very obtrusive fact, is appended
to a clause beginning with though, making the effect of a
digression or disproportion of thought. It is following out
the line of the subordinate clause instead of the principal ;
an occasional mark of Koheleth's imperfect literary mass
ing, compare Survey vi. 29-34. The thought thrust in,
No one knoweth what shall be, is Koheleth's frequent re
monstrance against the speculative tendencies of his time ;
maintained here by a census of things that are least in
man's power. See Survey iv. 44, and note.

54. After what manner • the weak point in this whole
matter of vaticination is, that men have no data on which
to base their view of the future, there is none to reveal the
manner of it. Take, for instance, the post-obituary here
after, in which in Koheleth's mind the idle vaticination of
his age culminates, — who can tell the conditions of a dis
embodied existence ? As John Fiske says (Life Everlasting,
p. 58) : " Our notion of the survival of conscious activity
apart from material conditions is not only unsupported by
any evidence that can be gathered from the world of which

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 309

tell him ? No man hath power over
the wind, to restrain the wind ; and
there is no power over the day of
death; and there is no discharge
while the battle is on ; and wickedness eo
shall not deliver its devotee.

CHAP. vm. 8.

we have experience but is utterly and hopelessly incon
ceivable." It is just this phase of agnosticism that Kohe-
leth's scientific sense holds.

56. No man hath power ; the examples that follow cen
tre not in lack of insight but in lack of power ; as if his
thought were, You cannot bank on a future which you have
no inner power to mould or avert.

60. While the battle is on • lit. in war, or battle. It seems
to mean that the time for discharge is not while actual
fighting is going on.

61. Shall not deliver ; this assertion gains its strength by
being at the climax point in a category of things that can
most strongly be affirmed ; as much as to say, if you can
not change the law of things in the case of the wind, and
death, and battle, much more can you not change the law
that wickedness brings retribution. To expect to be deliv
ered from woe by wickedness is to trust to reversing the
immutable laws of being. Koheleth seems to have in mind
cases, prevalent in his time, wherein the idle fancies about
the hereafter had led to a kind of discount of it, using it
as an unspoken pretext for living an evil life and trust
ing to escape its consequences. The implication seems to
be, that any reliance on immortality which leads to slack
ened energy or devotion to wickedness here is fallacious ;
it obliterates the bounds of good and evil, wisdom and

310 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

and when All this have I seen when I ap-

the balance 1,1,.

shall be plied my heart to every work that is

made even.

wrought under the sun : — a time

es when man ruleth over man, to his hurt.
But so also have I seen the wicked
buried ; and they came, and from the
holy place they went, and were for
gotten in the city where they had

70 so done ; this too, a vanity.

Because sentence against an evil

CHAP. vm. 9-11.

folly. Wickedness is a broken reed, whether here or yon
der.

' 62. All this, namely, what is to be named. To what has
just been said about the fallacy of trusting in wickedness,
the objection might presumably be raised, But we see wick
edness raised to power and success, and dying with honor.
Koheleth concedes (and it is not a new concession) that
wickedness has been seen in the ascendant, in rampant,
heartless tyranny ; but also that the wicked man has passed
away in death, and has been forgotten. You cannot bank
on wickedness, therefore ; it has not the future. This idea,
taken here as an assured finding of Wisdom, is one which
Job maintained against his friends by hard fighting ; see
my Epic of the Inner Life, p. 274.

68. And were forgotten ; Koheleth thus puts trust in wick
edness into the category of vain and transitory things ; one
is reminded of his " Generation goeth, and generation corn-
eth," Proem, 1. 6, and " There is no remembrance," ib. 27.
In a more generalized way he takes up the vanity of this
again, 1. 134, below.

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 311

work is not executed speedily, there-

fore the heart of the sons of men

within them is f ull-set to do evil, - Judgment,

just because a sinner may do evil a 75

hundred times, and survive it. For all but to hold

to the sure
that, I know that there shall be good law of good,

CHAP. vni. 11, 12.

74. Full-set to do evil ; as men have been represented as
presuming on speculative hereafters to do evil (1. 61, note),
so here they are represented as presuming on delay of judg
ment, playing, as it were, with a sleeping volcano. It is look
ing for the eventuation of things outside of them instead of
within, and because it is not imminent they take occasion
to follow their hearts into evil. They thus, by following
present inclination, make up life not with reference to a
judgment that is intrinsic, but to a presumed accident ; it is
the childish evasion of penalty that governs them. Not the
law within but the impunity without is their guide ; so their
life is a kind of culprit life, a dodging of eternal issues.
Such life is the polar contrast to the life intrinsic.

75. Just because ; this clause, its introducing word (be
cause) being the same in Hebrew as the one in 1. 71, is con
nected, by w-iy of repeat or supplement, to the clause be
fore, instead of to the succeeding, as is usually done. The
more literal translation calls for it, and it is more consecutive.

76. For all that, I know ; the permanent conclusion of wis
dom, the solid foundation which no discovery of vanity
can shake. In the fear of God itself is something intrinsic
(compare Survey iv. 101) ; it is its own life and blessed
ness ; it is not a dodging of something to come, but a pre
sent character and value. The good of the fear of God
proves itself.

312 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

to them that fear God, that fear before
His face; and good shall not be to
so the wicked, nor shall he prolong his
shadow-like days, because he feareth
not before the face of God.

It is a vanity which is wrought on

CHAP. vm. 12-14.

79. Good shall not be to the wicked; in his dodging of
judgment, as represented in 1. 74, he is not looking for good,
but simply braving impunity. Prolong such a state ever so
far, and no positive good can come of it, only a vacuity.
Good that is postponed to a future is not good at all ; to look
for it, when the present bent is evil, is to cherish a fallacy.

80. His shadow-like days • a name which Koheleth gives
to all the vain life of earth, Survey iv. 42, but especially
applicable to the life of the wicked, because the days spent
in postponing life's issues are no real character but a shadow,
a dream.

81. Because he feareth not ; this thrice-repeated fear, or
reverence, seems insisted on as a counterweight to the brav
ing of a delayed judgment. The lack of such reverence is
itself a lack, in effect, of vitality. Job (xxvii. 10) gives a
similar account of the wicked brought to his doom and hav
ing no fear of God, or delight in Him, wherewith to meet it.

83. It is a vanity • Koheleth here takes up for fuller
consideration what he broached in Survey iv. 90, and has
touched upon casually in 1. 75 above. The difference in
tone between Koheleth and Job is notable in the fact that
while Job views this mystery of righteous and wicked with
dismay, as a traverse of justice (Job xxi. 6, 7), Koheleth,
in calm philosophical mood, views it as a vanity. This does
not indicate that Koheleth sees less clearly or feels less

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 313

the earth, that there are righteous to
whom it befalleth according to the 85
work of the wicked ; and there are
wicked to whom it befalleth according
to the work of the righteous. I have
said that this also is vanity ; and I
have commended good cheer, holding 90

CHAP. vin. 14, 15.

deeply than Job ; it means rather that the fact which in
Job's time was as it were a new discovery throwing current
doctrines into confusion, is in Koheleth's later age a part of
the recognized order — or disorder — of things. None the
less it is " a vanity," — this evident fact that you cannot
fathom life by the standard of rewards and penalties so as
to tell from the latter just the mind of God. You see wicked
prospered and righteous afflicted ; there is nothing solid
yielded, therefore, by thus observing what goes on without \
you cannot build life on it. What, then, can you trust ?

88. / have said • perhaps referring to what he said about
the tyrant, 1. 70, above.

89. And I have commended good cheer ; repeatedly, as the
solution of e^ery Survey. Good cheer is commended be
cause it is the expression of a nature at peace, and thus in
present possession of its blessedness. To eat and to drink
is recommended not as the securing of so much food and
wine, for the viands themselves are vanity ; it is the sign
that the life is in good running order. In every other place
where these have been commended (Survey i. 118 ; ii. 31 ;
iii. 118), they have been conjoined with happy labor. Here
they are mentioned as a means of sweetening toil. If that
hardest portion in life is accepted with joy, and the joy

314 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

and to pos- that there is nothing better to man

in that good under the sun than to eat and drink
cheer which

sweetens and be glad, and that this go along

with him in his toil, the days of his
95 life which God hath given him under
the sun.

Ill

WHEN I gave my heart to know
wisdom, and to see the toilsome labor

CHAP. VHI. 15, 16.

remains as long as he lives, a constant fountain of gladness
and good cheer, why should man torment himself with the
uncertainty of what is going to befall ? A compensation
this, in which the inconclusive speculations about future
judgments or future rewards disappear.

97-139. In this section Koheleth brings his wisdom to
bear on the most baffling problem of his inquiry, the prob
lem of the universal sameness and the universal labor. No
aspect of it is new ; it has been broached in Survey i. 4-12 ;
ii. 54-66, and touched upon many times. But it needs the
more to be met here because it is a mystery that cannot
be fathomed ; the part of Wisdom, when all is said, is to
determine not what may be known, but what may be done
about it, what life may be lived and enjoyed in the face of
an all-pervading enigma.

98. The toilsome labor ; it was the sight of this, and the
thought of its interminable routine, without apparent pro
gress or purpose, which pressed from Koheleth his initial
question, " What profit ? " (Proem, 1. 3) and caused all
his sympathetic sadness (Survey i. 5, 22).

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 315

that is wrought upon earth, — for wisdom

before the
verily there is that seeth no sleep with 100 §J|JfJ}a8 Ol

his eyes day or night, — then I saw
all the work of God, that man cannot
fathom the work that is wrought
under the sun ; for however man may
labor to search out, he will not be 105
able to find ; nay, though the sage
deem he knoweth, he will not be able
to find.

For all this have I laid to heart,
even to explain all this : that the no

CHAP. vin. 16-ix. 1.

102. All the work of God is identified with the work that is
wrought under the sun. In spite of all its evils and crooked
devices, yet from a point of view higher up it is still the
work of God. — Man cannot fathom • this is Koheleth's more
deliberate iteration of what he has already said, Survey ii.
27. There the assertion was appended to a weightier one ;
here it is taken up as a main truth, which in its turn must
be verified by wisdom.

106. Though the sage deem he knoweth ; yet the sage should
know if any one. This is Koheleth's way of acknowledging
that human reason, like water, cannot rise higher than its
own level. Knowledge, too, is in the same category with
the rest ; it looks on and observes, but not from a height
above or an event beyond ; it is entangled in the same per
plexed web as the works themselves. Koheleth is dimly
aware that the supreme solution of life is not yet in the
manhood consciousness ; to attain it man must rise higher
in the scale of being.

316 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

Presume not righteous and the wise, with their

on the same- ,

ness of works, are in the hand of God.

warrant for Whether it be love or hate, knoweth
unwisdom ;

no man, — as it lieth all spread out

CHAP. ix. 1.

112. Are in the hand of God ; meanwhile enigmas of
destiny are in safe hands, and may be left there. As an
apostle puts it later, " The Lord knoweth them that are
his," 2 Timothy ii. 19. The implication is, that only God
can penetrate motives and mete bounds of conduct ; we can
merely look on from the outside.

113. Knoweth no man, emphatic as contrasted to God. No
man can go below the surface and judge the springs of
human action.

114. ,4s it lieth all spread out before them ; lit. " all before
them." It is necessary to supply several words to bring out
the meaning of DrP^b, which has a local rather than tem
poral sense, something like "in their presence." It is a
descriptive phrase, in which Koheleth endeavors to portray
the world of human deeds as a phantasmagoria, wherein we
can see actions taking place, as in a show, but cannot tell
whether they are inspired by love or hate. After all, man
can see only the outside of things ; the tangle of motives,
loves, and hates, some good, some bad, none so predominant
as to tip the balance absolutely to good or evil, is therefore
not to be judged by the intellect alone, or by man's judg
ment. " The recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata
of character, are the only places in the world in which we
catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how
events happen, and how work is actually done. Compared
with this world of living individualized feelings, the world
of generalized objects which the intellect contemplates is

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 317

before them. All cometh to one as to 115
another ; one event to righteous and
wicked ; to the good, and to the clean,

CHAP. ix. 2.

without solidity or life. As in stereoscopic or kinetoscopic
pictures seen outside the instrument, the third dimension,
the movement, the vital element, are not there. We get a
beautiful picture of an express train supposed to be moving,
but where in the picture, as I have heard a friend say, is
the energy or the fifty miles an hour ? " — James, Varieties
of Religious Experience, p. 501.

115. To one as to another ; lit. " all as to all." — One event •
Koheleth is thinking of the end of life in the same phe
nomenal aspect that he has just ascribed to the welter of
worldly acts and motives ; the final event, too, we can see
only from the outside. The fullness and absolute tone in
which he amplifies this assertion would seem to indicate
that he is making it good, in a kind of defiance, against men
who have gone beyond the warrant in interpreting future
things. He has already affirmed the same thing, Survey
i. 79, ii. 58-66, more especially with reference to the ani
mal nature ; here he gives it a vaster sweep by applying it
to the religious standards of Mosaism. It is his most em
phatic and absolute confession, wrung from him by honesty
to the facts of his dispensation, that life and immortality
are not yet in the clear ken of the manhood soul.

117. To the clean, and to the unclean ; this names the dis
tinctive feature that marks off the Jew from other nations;
and Koheleth's assertion shows how far beyond national
boundaries his imagination has broadened. It is man as
man, Gentile as well as Jew, man essential, that he is con
templating ; the one event he sees makes no difference for
ceremonial, or national, or even religious distinctions.

318 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

and to the unclean ; to him that sacri-
ficeth and to him that sacrificeth not ;
120 like good, like sinner ; he that swear-
eth as he that shunneth an oath. This
is an evil in all that is wrought under
the sun, that there is one event to all ;
and this too, that the heart of the sons

CHAP. ix. 2, 3.

118. That sacrificeth, and that sweareth, in the next line,
are selected, perhaps, as the more scrupulous and holy in
side the Jewish religion; as much as to say, even the most
exacting observance of legalism cannot make special claims
on the hereafter.

121. This is an evil; " There is no escape from recog
nizing the incurable, ineffaceable evil in things." It is in
grained and inveterate under the sun. Though it is in the
order of things, and though our business is to adjust our
selves by wisdom to it, it is none the less an evil. Koheleth
sums it up here in two counts. An evil, for one thing, that
in a state of existence calling logically for a key and raison
d'etre, the key is not given. A moral law, a demand on con
duct, should vindicate itself ; the end should crown the work.
Here, in the absolute sameness of outcome, it is not so.

124. And this too ; for another thing, that the heart is not
adjusted even to the standard there is. Koheleth's convic
tion, 11. 77-82, is that good shall not be to the wicked, and
that good shall be to those who fear God ; yet the instinct
of man leads him to the evil. This summary, which Kohe
leth recalls from 1. 73 above, is his Seventh of Romans ; it
finds the same evil in the world, that law is good but man
is somehow a misfit.

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 319

of men is full of evil, and madness is 125
in their hearts while they live, and
after that — to the dead.

For who is he that is bound up
with all the living ? — to him there is

CHAP. ix. 3, 4.

125. Madness; compare 1. 20 above. No milder word
can name that inveterate tendency in man to work against
his own interests.

127. To the dead • a touch of the same phantasmagoric
description as above, 1. 114. He sees the crowds as it were
tumbling into the charnel-house and lost, as in the picture
given in the Vision of Mirzah. Madness in this life, a heap
of huddled corpses at the end, — what a picture !

128. Bound up with all the living • the expression seems
to be suggested as a companion image to the picture just
given of the dead. The dead tumbled together in a moulder
ing heap, the living bound together in a mutually support
ing bundle ; for the phrase, compare 1 Samuel xxv. 29. The
translation bound up is adopted here, instead of exempted,
the marginal reading (K'ri) for the written text (K'thib),
The sense is clearer, also, to join the question with the next
clause instead of the preceding, as indeed the new meaning
also demands.

129. To him there is hope. . . . For the living know ; Kohe-
leth is evidently laboring to set the hopefulness and intel
ligence of life over against the blankness of the grave. It
is the contrast between the one who has life in his heart, as
an inspiration, and the one who has death in his thoughts,
as a dread. It gives another entrgy to one's whole being,
even while, the same ending continues unabolished. Steven
son's glowing words are in place here, dealing as they do

320 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

tut make up 130 hope ; for the living" do£ is better than

life with 11 11.

reference the dead lion, lor the living know

rather to life

than to the that they will die ; but the dead know
impending

not anything, nor have they reward

any more, for the memory of them is

135 forgotten. Alike their love, their hate,

CHAP. ix. 4-6.

with the same imagery : "Every heart that has beat strong
and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the
world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if
death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career,
laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous founda
tions, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful
language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced :
is there not something brave and spirited in such a termi
nation ? and does not life go down with a better grace,
foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably strag
gling to an end in sandy deltas ? " Koheleth, as appears
from the solution that he sets over against this passage,
11. 140-155, is trying to set up a similar current of brave
hopefulness in life which will enable man to ignore death.

130. The living dog • one of Koheleth's homely maxims
mosaicked in with his argument.

132. Know not anything ; Koheleth throughout his book
describes things as he sees them. The dead are simply
dead ; and as there is none to report to man " what shall be
after him," the state after death is regarded as non-existent.
So far as any motive or inspiration that it can furnish, it
is so; therefore we have no warrant for feeding our life
on the rewards, or the loves, or the hates, or the ambitions
that supposably came to us from beyond.

134. The memory of them is forgotten; as Koheleth has
said of all earthly things, Proem, 1. 27.

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 321

their ambition, are perished long ago,
and portion have they no more for
ever, in all that is wrought under the
sun.

IV

Go THOU, eat thy bread with glad- uo The soiu-
ness, and drink with merry heart thy fully fur-

* J nished and

wine ; for already hath God accepted
thy works. At every season let thy

CHAP. ix. 6-8.

137. Portion . . . under the sun • compare Survey i. 61,
note. Man's work is oftenest mentioned as his portion ; it
is fitting here, therefore, that the dead should be mentioned
as no more having portion in all that is wrought. If they no
longer share in the work of the world, they are no longer a
source of motive and energy.

140-155. Go thou, etc. This solution is the most detailed,
the most emphatic, the most practical, of all that have been
given, because its induction of facts is greater, and because
the mists have been more fully cleared away from the goal
of life. And it has reduced itself more and more to the life
intrinsic, of which this is a workingman's portrayal.

142. For already hath God accepted thy works ; this is the
key to the hopefulness and courage of the passage. It is
the thing to take for granted. Not looking to some inde
finite future when your works will be accepted ; not post
poning life therefore, but taking what is as your portion.
You can get reward in work here and now, and God is as
good and as present as He ever will be. All these details
of eating and drinking, white garments and oil, domestic
comfort and love of wife, are so many details of making

322 WORDS OF KOHELETH V

garments be white, and oil upon thy

145 head not be lacking. Prove life with

a woman whom thou lovest all the

days of thy vapor-life which He hath

given thee under the sun, — all the

days of thy vanity. For this is thy

150 portion in life, and in thy labor which

thou laborest under the sun. All that

thy hand findeth to do, do thou with

CHAP. ix. 8-10.

one's self at home ; they virtually say, Here is your home,
here is your work, here is the field of your interests and
talents ; be at home.

145. Prove life ; lit. "see life;" sharing in joys and sor
rows and work.

146. A woman whom thou lovest ; Koheleth thus sets his
stamp on the married life as an element of the ideal felicity
of this earthly state. The whole tone of it is in contrast to
what he has said of woman in relation to the world's froward
devices, 11. 20-31. In his ideal of life woman is not set over
against man as his tempter, but set by his side as sharer
and helper.

147. Thy vapor-life . . . thy vanity ; this side of it is
brought up again in full sight of the wise course here incul
cated ; as much as to say, Rescue so much that is solid and
real from the vanity in which you move. One thinks of Omar
Khayyam's, —

" A moment's Halt — a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste —

And Lo ! — the phantom Caravan has reach' d
The NOTHING it set out from — Oh, make haste ! "

151. All that thy handfndeth to do; the contrast to Omar

V AVAILS OF WISDOM 323

thy might ; for there is no work, nor
cleverness, nor knowledge, nor wis
dom, in the grave whither thou goest. 155

CHAP. ix. 10.

is as striking as the parallel. Omar appeals to the despair
ing and pessimistic side of life ; Koheleth to the active and
responsible. " Wo du bist, sei alles," says Goethe; where
thou art, be all there; a good parallel to this summary of
the life of energy and hope.

155. In the grave ; in Sheol. This is no more to be pressed
into an absolute denial of immortality than are Jesus'
words, " The night coineth, when no man can work," John
ix. 4. It simply takes what is before the consciousness of
all, Sheol, the place of the dead, and bases its counsel on
that. The contemplation of that is enough to motive all his
plea. Koheleth has in mind the difference between a life fed
with images of energy and happy achievement and a life
filled with images of death and cessation. So the upshot is,
not, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, but, Let us
eat and drink because we have found our intrinsic portion,
a work that may take in all our powers and delights. Else
where Koheleth has inveighed against feeding life on idle
speculations ; here he is making his plea good against feed
ing life on the prospect of gain. It is the vital wisdom with
which he meets his age's disposition to postpone life or to
live it with a politic eye on the future ; the real profit, or
yithron, of which we can be sure.

THE SIXTH SURVEY

WISDOM ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE

Discount for T~ TURNED, and I saw under the

the thwart- . .,

ing element I sun. that the race is not to the
of time and

chance. swift, nor the battle to the strong ; nay

CHAP. ix. 11.

With the foregoing Survey Koheleth's treatment of his
course of thought is in the main complete. The present
Survey, as is suggested in the opening paragraph, occupies
itself with some of the emergencies, particular occasions,
chances, and hard places of life, bringing wisdom in vari
ous ways to bear upon them. It is of more miscellaneous
character than the preceding Surveys ; in its collection of
detached maxims it seems to indicate that either the topic
was left unfinished and unrevised, or the occasion was taken
to group under this head some maxims left over from Ko
heleth's collection, which was confessedly in part compiled.
Part of the maxims are in prose, part in poetry.

LINE 1. / turned, and I saw; after Koheleth's usual
manner the Survey begins with some concrete cases, out of
which the generalized thought grows. As related to pre
vious Surveys, this is like bringing in exceptions to the
ordinary rule of things.

2. The race is not to the swift ; but the inference is not,
Be slow, or indifferent. It remains true that swiftness is
better than slowness, and wisdom is to folly as light to

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 325

further, that bread is not to the wise,
nor riches to the prudent, nor yet 5
favor to the learned; for time and
chance befalleth them all ; nor indeed

CHAP. ix. 11, 12.

darkness ; Survey i. 73. It remains true that these are in
trinsic endowments of life, their own reward apart from
results. It is not for infallible results that we should value
them. We cannot surely say, Given swiftness, heroism, wis
dom, and the rest, the results must follow. There is still,
as in games so in life, the element of chance, accident,
luck, to be reckoned with.

6. Time and chance. To the general subject of timeliness
Koheleth has devoted a whole Survey (ii.) ; and has brought
it up again, Survey v. 49, as an element in a wise man's
tactfulness. But just as it ought to be observed, so also
it may fail. -A man's endowments may not be adapted to
the occasion ; his plans, shrewd and able, may be like the
Rev. Amos Barton's moves in chess, — " admirably well cal
culated, supposing the state of the case were otherwise."
— And chance ; Koheleth has already made a sweeping
assertion about chance, as related to man's animal nature,
Survey ii. 55 ; here its application is to man's work and
plans. Maeterlinck thus defines this element of the acci
dental in life: "We have our thoughts, which build up our
intimate happiness or sorrow ; and upon this events from
without have more or less influence. . . . And we have our
will, which our thoughts feed and sustain ; and many use
less or harmful events can be held in check by our will.
But around these islets, within which is a certain degree
of safety, of immunity from attack, extends a region as vast
and uncontrollable as the ocean, swayed by chance as the

326 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

doth man know his time. As the fishes
that are caught in a deadly net, and
10 as the birds taken in the snare, —
like them the sons of men are snared
at a time of disaster, when it falleth
upon them suddenly.

I

wisdom as BUT this too I saw : wisdom under

an unvalued

power work- 15 the sun, and it was great unto me.

CHAP. ix. 12, 13.

waves are swayed by the wind. Neither will nor thought
can keep one of these waves from suddenly breaking upon
us ; and we shall be caught unawares, and perhaps be
wounded and stunned. Only when the wave has retreated
can thought and will begin their beneficent action. Then
they will raise us, and bind up our wounds, restore anima
tion, and take careful heed that the mischief the shock
has wrought shall not touch the profound sources of life."

- The Buried Temple, p. 273.

11. Are snared, as if the trap were purposely set for them.
" The air we breathe, the time we traverse, the space
through which we move, are all peopled by lurking cir
cumstances, which pick us out from among the crowd."

-Ib. p. 275.

14. But this too I saw: wisdom. To offset these mysterious
onsets of chance, a concrete example of wisdom is given,
apparently to show how it, as a power in life, works just
as secretly and potently as they. Wisdom is for Koheleth
what thought and will are in the passages quoted from
Maeterlinck. They "may, on the surface," he says (ib.

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 327
A little city there was. and the men under the

, surface

within it few. And there came against of tMngs.
it a great king, and beleaguered it, and
built great mounds against it. And
there was found therein a man poor 20
and wise, and by his wisdom he saved
the city. Yet not one remembered

CHAP. ix. 14, 15.

p. 274), " appear very humble. In reality, however, unless
chance assume the irresistible form of cruel disease or
death, the workings of will and thought shall suffice to
neutralize all its efforts, and to preserve what is best and
most essential to man in human happiness." This makes
thought and will merely remedial ; Koheleth views wis
dom as an adaptedness to all times of emergency and
opportunity.

16. A little city there was, etc. Much study has been ex
pended in the attempt to identify this parable with some
historical event, but with no convincing result.

21. By his wisdom • this is the test of it all. Wisdom is
the power that saves, that meets emergencies ; it manifests
its value in what it does. It is the unnoticed power under
the surface of affairs, the power that is doing its work while
clamors come and go.

22. Not one remembered ; because, as everywhere, the
fickle crowd were taken with what was showy or clamor
ous or had the prestige of riches. On the score of fame or
reward, therefore, the poor man's wisdom was a failure ; it
was not to be valued for any cash equivalent or profit from
outside. Koheleth's idea of the intrinsic as opposed to yith-
ron is coming in sight again.

328 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

that poor man. And I said, Better
is wisdom than might, though the wis-
25 dom of the poor man is despised, and
his words are not regarded. Words
of the wise, heard in quiet, are bet
ter than the clamor of him that ruleth
among fools. Better is wisdom than

CHAP. ix. 16-18.

23. Better is wisdom ; the lack of appreciation and remem
brance does not impair the absolute worth of wisdom ; it
evinces its superiority by actually doing more, the practical
test. If it is despised because it coexists with poverty, the
reproach is not in it, but in those who misjudge it.

24. Than might; Survey v. 1.

27. Heard in quiet ; because quiet, a calm, unforced spirit,
is the accessible spirit, the spirit that takes in and assimi
lates. Tennyson expresses a similar idea of the suscepti
bility of the soul to spiritual influences : —

" They haunt the silence of the breast,
Imaginations calm and fair,
The memory like a cloudless air,
The conscience as a sea at rest :

" But when the heart is full of din,
And doubt beside the portal waits,
They can but listen at the gates,
And hear the household jar within."

In Memoriam, xciv.

Koheleth's thought is far less subtle, but it points in the
same direction ; compare Survey iii. 62, and note.

28. Him that ruleth among fools • Kobeleth here comes
again in contact with his pet antipathy, the wordiness of
fools. One who exercises authority over such, however wise

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 329

weapons of war ; though one sinner so
destroyeth much good ; — just as dead
flies taint and ferment the perfumer's
oil, so a little folly outweigheth wis
dom and honor.

CHAP. ix. 18-x. 1.

he may be, must raise his voice, must force the note, must
clamor ; and even then the access is only to fools.

31. As dead flies, etc. This is doubtless an aphorism from
Koheleth's collection, and he has had to use a little violence
to the continuity of his thought in finding a place for it.
The main thesis is, that wisdom is better than weapons of
war ; the pendant to this, though one sinner destroyeth
much good. If the thought had stopped here, the sense of
digression, in the clause beginning with " though," would
not have been great. But the matter of the subordinate
clause itself provokes elucidation ; at all events, here is the
aphorism ready to illustrate it ; so it is introduced in such
manner as to elongate the tail of the sentence rather than
enlarge the body. A little clumsy, from the point of view
of its massing, but quite intelligible. For a similar con
struction, see Survey v. 53.

33. A little folly, with some stress on the little. The as
sertion is quite analogous to what is said about time and
chance, 1. 6. A lack in fitting the occasion may bring a plan
otherwise good to nought ; a dead fly may make a very
costly oil rancid. The point is, the more fine and valuable
the thing, the more minute defect may spoil it. Wisdom
and honor, the highest, most delicate values in life, may be
almost annulled by the contemptible little ingredient of
folly, just because they are so fine. Coarse things are
not so.

330 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

II

Prose 35 THE heart of the wise is toward

oTwYsdom's his right, but the heart of a fool to-

words and , , . , „, ^T • ,1

works. ward his left. Nay, more, in the way,

as the fool is walking his understand
ing faileth, and he saith to every one
40 that he is a fool.

CHAP. x. 2, 3.

35. Toward his right . . . toward his left ; the distinction
is not a moral one but practical ; it is directed against the
futile, unhandy, useless ideals of a fool. He is, as we would
say, no manager, has no gumption.

37. In the way ; the place of concourse and intercourse,
where one should be sanest, where one's every-day abilities
should count most. It requires least effort to walk, least
wisdom, to keep to the highway ; yet even there, not in the
strenuous occasions but there, the fool fails.

39. And he saith to every one that he, namely himself, is a
fool. Some take it that he accuses others of folly, just
as a drunkard thinks every one else is drunk. But this,
though not untrue, seems to me a forced interpretation.
Rather, what the fool says, whether in so many words or
not, confesses folly. Just as a man's wisdom lights up his
face (Survey v. 37), so the fool's whole expression of him
self radiates folly. Society is full of persons who, in one
way or other, advertise that they are fools, and are una
shamed ; witness the nonsense that is said about art, and
music, and public questions. A man may reveal his opinion
on some question of taste or policy, saying nothing about
himself at all, and yet all the while be writing himself an

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 331

If the spirit of the ruler riseth
against thee, leave not thy place, for
gentleness allayeth great offenses.

There is an evil I have seen under
the sun, such an error as proceedeth 45
from the ruler's quarter. Folly is

CHAP. x. 4, 5.

ass. It is men like this, I think, that Koheleth has here in
mind.

42. Leave not thy place ; that is, thy orbit, as it were, of
calm good sense and good temper. Koheleth's ideal is, how
to adapt yourself to circumstances so as to gain your point.
And it reduces itself practically to, Keep your head and
keep quiet. The same self-respecting wisdom, as expressed
in obedience, is inculcated, Survey v. 40-45. Doubtless the
arbitrary and despotic conditions of government in Kohe
leth's day were what made that side of wisdom important.
It is the wisdom of the under man; but it evolved that idea,
so great and masterful, which in one phase was afterward
expressed in a beatitude, " Blessed are the meek."

45. Such an error • this sounds like a guarded expression,
as if the writer were not free to give it the bad name it
merited. He is not hinting, however, at the wickedness of
such reversal in government, only at its lack of wisdom.
And from this point of view the word is strictly true ; it is
an error, a disastrous blunder in government, to put foolish
favorites above nobles.

46. The ruler's quarter, lit. " presence." That is, such an
error as only a despotism could produce ; not a common
man's error this time, but a natural fruit of favoritism and
tyranny. The Oriental despot, as a ruler, attracted fools
as tainted meat attracts flies.

332 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

placed in the highest stations, while
the nobles sit in lowly place. I have
seen servants on horses, and princes
50 walking like menials on the earth.

He that diggeth a pit may fall
therein ; and he that breaketh through

CHAP. x. &-8.

47. While the nobles, lit. " the rich." Koheleth's idea of
the natural nobility of a state is that it is made up of those
whose ability to get wealth has proved their prudence and
wisdom ; besides, the large interests they represent make
them the natural arbiters in the public management and
disposal of them. They are the substantial, responsible
class, the real sinews of the body politic ; while the sup
porters of a despotic government are adventurers and para
sites. It is easy to see from this what Koheleth's ideal of
good government is.

49. Servants on horses • the privilege of riding a horse,
rather than an ass or mule, is the sign of distinction in
Oriental countries ; and here, it would seem, the contrast
is all the more accentuated by making the princes walk.

50. Like menials ; the same word is translated servants in
the line above, but the present translation connotes the
aspect of servitude that Koheleth wished to bring out.

51-60. The maxims grouped in this paragraph all deal
with one subject, which is clinched in the last sentence,
1. 59. They illustrate in various ways the idea that every
course, in life or action, has its obverse, its risk. Wisdom,
therefore, counts the cost, has the risk in mind, and is ready
to take it ; wisdom is preparedness for the contingent.
This agrees well with the idea of time and chance which
underlies this Survey.

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 333

a wall, a serpent may bite him. He
that quarrieth stones may hurt him
self with them. He that cleaveth 55
wood may endanger himself thereby.
If the iron be blunt, and he whet not
the edge, then must he put forth
greater strength. But the surplus
that giveth success is wisdom. eo

CHAP. x. 8-10.

54. Quarrieth stones . . . cleaveth wood • an interest at
taches to these verses from the fact that in the papyrus
fragment of Sayings of our Lord, found at Oxyrhynchus in
Egypt a few years ago, there is a saying apparently mod
eled on a reminiscence of these words. So far as it may be
deciphered it reads : " Jesus saith, Wherever there are
. . . and there is one . . . alone, I am with him. Raise
the stone and there thou shalt find me, cleave the wood
and there am I."

57. If the iron be blunt, etc. That same preparedness for
the alternative leads one to save labor. Whetting the edge
is putting head-work into the task, and thereby saving so
much brute strength. If he do not so prepare, he must con
tent himself with a lower grade of activity.

59. But the surplus ; Koheleth's much-used word yithron.
His idea is, that in all these activities the margin that really
counts, that has, so to say, the balance of power, is wisdom.
The rest is only such calculation as crude or brute labor can
make ; but the foresight that will take risks intelligently,
so as to guard against or discount them, and that will take
hold of a job of work by its smoothest and easiest end, is a
kind of surplusage; it is the reserve power more than the raw

334 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

If the serpent hath bitten before
the charm, then is the charmer of no
advantage.

The words of a wise man's mouth
65 are grace ; but the lips of a fool swal
low him up. The beginning of the

CHAP. x. 11-13.

task needs, but is left over for giving it character and
success. We have but to project this whetting the edge
into the multiplicity of contrivances, labor-saving devices, so
characteristic of the American, to realize what is involved
in Koheleth's practical wisdom. And in fact this is the ex
pression, on the small scale of manual labor, of the attitude
which on the moral and cosmic scale Koheleth maintains
toward all his large problems of life.

62. Of no advantage • the same word yithron again. Even
the wisdom must be in time; its timeliness is an essential ele
ment of the surplusage, or advantage, that it contributes.

65. Are grace • are compliant and affable, making their
way thus by the line of least resistance. That is their wis
dom ; that quality conducts them to their end and goal.
One of Poor Richard's proverbs is quite in the spirit of this :
" The heart of the fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of
the wise man is in his heart." — Swallow him up ; that is,
his own words work his defeat and disaster ; or perhaps, as
Koheleth had the contrast to the preceding clause in mind,
the manner of them, their sharp temper, or inconsiderate-
ness, or misfit to occasion, may make them futile.

66. The beginning . . . the end • a gradation of folly is here
portrayed. To begin with there may be nothing harmful,
only silliness or nonsense ; but as the fool goes on, having
to fortify one uttered folly by another, and bringing his will

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 335

words of his mouth is silliness, and
the end of his speech is mischievous
madness. Then, too, the fool inulti-
plieth words ; — though man knoweth 70
not what shall be, for what is to be
after him, who shall tell him ? The
exertion of fools wearieth a man ; one

CHAP. x. 13-15.

and emotions to the reinforcing, he stops not for any wise
balance until his words are in the extremity ; the fatuity
has become a mischievous madness. That is the tendency
when judgment and principle are wanting.

68. Of his speech; lit. "of his mouth." So expressed,
perhaps, as a note of disparagement.

69. Multiplieth words ; with this feature of the descrip
tion Koheleth comes upon a trait which he ascribes not only
to fools, but also not obscurely to his age, which he regards
as nearly swamped with words, probably of the speculative
philosophy ; compare Survey iii. 58-69, and notes, also
ib. 80, and Introductory Study, pp. 42 sqq.

70. Though man knoweth not ; this is the second time that
Koheleth has connected the ignorance of future things with
the multiplying of words ; see Survey iv. 37-45, and notes
there. The connection of this with his characteristic agnos
ticism, and with his censure of his age, is described in the
Introductory Study : see reference in preceding note.

72. The exertion of fools ; lit. "labor," or "toil." That
is, he is trying so hard and so volubly, with such spilth
of words, to set forth some attenuated idea, that the result
is simply to tire out the hearer. — Wearieth a man ; lit.
" him ; " but the question is, who is meant by him f To
make it mean the fool, or every fool, as the Revised Ver-

336 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

knoweth not from it how to go to the
75 city.

Ill

WOE to thee, O land, whose king
is a boy !

CHAP. x. 15, 16.

sion seems to do, is to make a singular pronoun refer to a
plural antecedent. The passage is confessedly one of the
most difficult in the book ; but the nearest approach to
clear sense seems to be that the man who hears so much
labored explanation is not only wearied out (compare the
slang expression, " You make me tired ") by it, but cannot
from it make out so much as the plainest information, —
the way to the city, which ought to be the easiest thing
in the world to point out. A variety of folk-expressions
occur by way of parallel ; for instance, " He does n't know
enough to go in when it rains." The great exertion and
little result here described recalls Shakespeare's descrip
tion in the words of Macbeth, —

" a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

The whole passage reveals such an animus of antipathy, on
Koheleth's part, that we cannot but think he is near letting
the word-mongery of his age sour him.

76-106. In the collection of aphorisms here beginning,
the parallelism, and generally the imaginative or emotional
touch, is so much more marked as to call for their being
printed as poetry. The subject, too, corresponds ; being
generally more idealized, more of the inner world of ideals
and sentiment.

77. Whose king is a boy ; it may be that Koheleth, who

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 337
And whose princes feast in the morn- poetic

aphorisms
ing ! of wisdom,

CHAP. x. 16.

is personating Solomon, intends here, in a mixture of pro
phecy and history, to allude to the young llehoboam and
his dissolute companions ; see 1 Kings xii. 1-20. With this
agrees also the picture that he has given of folly usurping
high places and debasing the wise princes, 11. 46-50 above.
At the same time this may cover an allusion to contem
porary conditions. Streane says (in his little commentary
on Ecclesiastes, p. 98) : " The case referred to can scarcely
be an imaginary one. Ptolemy Epiphanes succeeded his
father, Philopator, at the age of six years (205 B. c.), and
during his minority there was much strife between the Syr
ian and Jewish factions in Egypt, and, on the part of some
in high places, licentious indulgence all day and every day.
Their feastings, we may well suppose, were not limited to
the hours usually set apart for relaxation." If this was in
Koheleth's mind, it is equally easy to identify Ptolemy Phi
lopator (except for the poverty) with the youth who began
his reign with such eclat, Survey iii. 49 ; and his predeces
sor, Euergetes, who degenerated in his old age into " a
good-natured but lazy patron of politicians, of priests, and of
pedants," with the " old and foolish king," Survey iii. 44.
By Koheleth's time the young man, in his turn, could have
been succeeded by another and forgotten, as recorded in
iii. 54. The history is too scanty to be certain, yet the co
incidences are noteworthy. — Koheleth's woe about the boy
king is not intended to inveigh against the government so
much as against the abuse of feasting and drinking. To
feast in the morning is both to waste the valuable part of
the day and to spoil one's self for the rest ; while, on the
other hand, eating has the practical end of strengthening the

338 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

as sanity Blessed thou, O land, whose king is a

and pru- ,. , ,

dence in son of nobles,
affairs.

And whose princes feast at fitting

time,

In manly strength, and not in rev-
so elry.

Through slothfulness the frame

sinketh in,

And through drooping of hands the
house drippeth.

CHAP. x. 17, 18.

body for manly use (1. 80), whereas revelry makes it an end
in itself. The verse shows clearly how much Epicureanism
we can charge against Koheleth in his eating and drinking
passages. A similar sentiment against gluttony is touched
upon, Survey iii. 99.

78. A son of nobles ; not the same word which identifies
the nobility, with the rich, 1. 48, above. There is recognized
here, in the son of nobles, the strength and character due
to good birth and family ; the wisdom of eating and care
of self is a part of their noblesse oblige.

81. Through slothfulness ; lit. "double sloth." The liter
ary zest of the maxim is in the association of remote ideas ;
the framework sinking in with the sloth, the leaky roof
with slack hands. It is put in here, probably, as suggested
by the thought of the idle roisterers in the palace ; a trans
lation, so to say, of the same principle into the dialect of
the common man, whose idleness, though it cannot take the
form of revelry, none the less may bring a calamity suited
to his station.

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 339

For mirth they make the feast,
And wine gladdeneth the life,
And money is the answer to it all. 85
Curse not the king, even in thy

thought,

And curse not the rich in thy bed
chamber ;

For a bird of the heavens will
carry forth the sound,

CHAP. x. 19, 20.

83. Another maxim suggested by the topic of feasting,
expressing a kind of rough-hewn description of worldly ex
istence. Laughter and good cheer are the off-hand ways of
killing time, the external motions of a merry albeit empty
life.

85. And money is the answer to it all; that is, perhaps,
furnishes the means of such luxury, and sets the standard
of the life. The maxim sounds like Koheleth's satirical
record of an age wherein the moneyed and smart set were
setting the pace for sentiment and morals. With this the
tone of all his counsel agrees.

86. Curs 2 not the king • this maxim throws a light on the
general atmosphere of Koheleth's day : it was a time of es
pionage and treachery, when it was not safe to talk. The
wisdom which Koheleth would set up in such circumstances
is not even to think evil against the powers that be, but to re
spect the office if not the man. The same sentiment has come
to light in his maxims about obedience, Survey v. 40-50, and
about gentleness in the presence of wrath, 11. 41^i3, above.

87. The rich, as the weighty members of the body politic ;
compare note to 1. 47, above.

340 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

And a winged thing will tell the

matter.

90 Cast thy bread upon the waters,
And after many days shalt thou

find it.
Give a portion to seven, yes, to eight,

CHAP. x. 20-xi. 2.

89. A winged thing • lit. " a lord of wings," an expression
chosen as a parallelistic repeat of the " bird of heaven" in
preceding line.

90. Cast thy bread ; this aphorism, one of the most quoted
in the book, is usually read as an inculcation of charity ; but
the charity it expresses is at best rudimental, not so much
charity, indeed, as a kind of business venture. One has to
run risks in business, to put forth goods or funds for the
sake of uncertain returns. This truth has been hinted in
the group of maxims, 11. 51-60, above. Here it is relinquish
ing what is in hand, and being generous, for the sake of
problematical returns, or to guard against evils to come,
when one may be left friendless. Jesus uses much the same
motive in his parable of the unrighteous steward, Luke xvi.
9 ; and indeed the Golden Rule is founded on the idea of
doing good with an eye to returns. The higher motive of
grace and beneficence comes to light more clearly in the
New Testament ; but this is a genuine start toward it, it is
a venture of faith, inculcated in the spirit of practical wis
dom. See my little book, The Passing of Self, pp. 17-20.

92. To seven, yes, to eight ; one cannot but recognize that
a new note is struck here, the note of faith, of launching
out into the realm of free spirit. And this note is kept up.
A writer in the London Spectator remarks : " Toward the
end of the book there is less reasoning and more giving in

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 341

For thou knowest not what evil will

be on the earth.

If the clouds be full of rain, they
empty it upon the earth ;

CHAP. xi. 2, 3.

to convictions. The writer is mentally tired out. He sees
that this ceaseless wondering and anxiety, this living in the
presence of death, will tie his hands and make his life abso
lutely barren. He determines to cease speculating and to
turn his face away from his last end. It is the only way, he
realizes, to accomplish anything. He begins to ' cast ' his
* bread upon the waters,' to work without too much thought
of results."

94. This maxim, taken from clouds and trees, is a rather
studied truism. The point, in saying a thing so obvious,
seems to be : Found your action on obvious cause and effect,
on the great simple laws of permanence and common phe
nomena ; in other words, do not refine away your thought
and action by indirectness and over-sophistication. Some
such lesson as this was certainly the opposite of a truism in
Koheleth's whole conduct of life. His book is throughout
a plea for making up character for genuineness and perma
nence. As the clouds empty of their fullness, so character
is to come of the full fountain of principle, motive, intrinsic
worth. As the tree stays where it falls, so character is to be
taken as it can hold out, and so also will destiny be accord
ing to its antecedent elements. It is only dimly, however,
that this is to be regarded as a pointer toward the Here
after, if it is at all ; it is rather a throb of that eternity in
the heart which has already emulated God's work of per
manence ; see note, Survey ii. 36. — If connection with the
preceding maxim is sought, it is perhaps not a forced inter-

342 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

Aiid if a tree fall toward the south
95 or toward the north,

In the place where the tree falleth,

there shall it be.
He that watcheth the wind will not

sow,
And he that eyeth the clouds will not

reap.
As thou knowest not what is the way

of the wind,

Nor the growth of the bones in the
100 womb of the pregnant,

CHAP. xi. 3-5.

pretation to say : Though casting away bread seems utterly
to ignore calculable results, and giving to others likewise,
yet perhaps there is enough responsiveness in manhood, or
compensation in the universe, so that the return may come
as rain from the clouds, and as much to be counted on as
the permanent position of the fallen tree. In other words,
there may be un worked possibilities in faith, which are yet
as certain as laws of nature.

97. He that watcheth the wind, that is, as an occupation.
The wind will never be quite right, the adjustment never
ideal ; if you depend absolutely on ideal conditions, you
will never do the task. Something must be ventured on
uncertainties ; it is the part of wisdom. Besides, the con
ditions which you desiderate are themselves unknown; thou
knowest not the way of the wind. You are dealing all the
while with unknown powers, which you must take on trust.
Jesus uses the wind likewise to illustrate the ignorance of
the unspiritual man ; see John iii. 8.

VI ENCOUNTERING TIME AND CHANCE 343

So thou knowest not the work of God,
Who yet worketh all.

IV

IN the morning sow thy seed, The solu

tion: work,

And at eve slacken not thy hand ; like the

J husband

man's,

CHAP. xi. 5, 6.

101. So thou knowest not; the smaller and every day ob
servable things used to point the larger truth. In Survey
ii. 27, Koheleth has affirmed an element of eternity in the
heart which, however, does not connote knowledge of God's
work, beginning or end. In Survey v. 102, he again asserts
this ignorance in most absolute terms, as motive for leaving
man's works in the hands of God (ib. 112), and fleeing from
the baffling things to the hope there is in life (1. 129) and the
joy of accepted work (11. 140 sqq.). And now here, in calmer
mood, he is getting ready to end the Survey with the same
hopeful counsel.

102. Who yet worketh all ; the very work of which we are
so ignorant is all the work there is. Even our own is bound
up inseparably with it ; compare note, Survey v. 102. There
has been no more absolute expression of Koheleth's agnos
ticism, anywhere in his book, than this.

103. Nor is there anywhere a more sane and beautiful
expression of his sturdy wisdom and manhood. The wis
dom that he thus sets, as a solution, over against the uncer
tainties of time and chance, is like the solution with which
he confronts the enigmas of fate, Survey iv. 99 ; only, he
met that problem with the fear of God, and this he meets
with the practical readiness of faithful work. Wisdom dic
tates one supreme thing : not, surrender the task on the
score of not knowing, but try every chance. The endeavor

344 WORDS OF KOHELETH VI

whteh'tata For tllou knowest not which shall
all chances. 105 prosper, this or that,

Or whether both shall alike be good.

CHAP. xi. 6.

may fail, but then too it may succeed ; one is as likely as
the other. Cast your effort on the side of faith, of success,
of life and growth ; and be diligent morning and evening ;
and hope. One is reminded of Tennyson's Ancient Sage :

" For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven : wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith ! "

So in this Survey on " Wisdom Encountering Time and
Chance," Koheleth, beginning with the utter dominance of
chance, like a trap set for men, finds first, to offset it, a
power of wisdom working unperceived in emergencies, the
power of considered and well-directed work ; then apply
ing that wisdom, through tact, through practical head-
work, through timeliness, through gracious and chosen
words ; rising from this to temperate and steady industry,
then to discretion in thought and word, he ends with that
wise veuturesomeness, expressed in generosity and benefi
cence, which is the next thing to faith, — nay, which as ap
plied to the unknown works of God, on whose world we are
absolutely dependent, becomes a real forthputting of faith,
in reliance on the uniformity of nature. It is still practical
wisdom, moving in the world of law, and looking out keenly
on this side and that ; but it has reached the frontier of the
continent of love. There is only a door to open, a current
of grace to unstop ; so that the manhood being, hungry for
more life, may overflow its old bounds into a kingdom of
grace and truth.

Y

THE SEVENTH SURVEY
REJOICE, AND REMEMBER

ES : the light is sweet, The whole

. counsel

And good it is for the eyes to proposed.

see the sun ;
For if a man live many years,

CHAP. xi. 7, 8.

As has been noted, the Surveys thus far have been made
up of two essential elements : observation or experience,
and counsel founded thereon. Thus in a rudimental way
the body of thought has proceeded in the way of induction
of facts and conclusion. As it has advanced, however, the
proportion of observed fact has decreased and the propor
tion of counsel augmented, until the thought, which in the
First Survey had a great predominance of fact and experi
ence, has in this Seventh Survey become almost entirely
counsel. And as each Survey has been conducted to a clos
ing stage which gave the counsel suited to that Survey in
brief, the present Survey may be regarded as the compre
hensive counsel suited to the whole book.

LINE 1. The light . . . the sun ; the sources and sugges
tions of joy here given are like a recourse to first principles,
or to primal comforts as instinctive as those of the animals ;
as if Koheleth would direct man, after all his searchings
and surveyings, to the simple environment that surrounds
every man. It is not in heaven, neither is it beyond the sea,
but very nigh thee ; see Deut. xxx. 11-14.

346 WORDS OF KOHELETH VII

Let him rejoice in them all ;
Yet let him remember the days of
darkness, 5

For many shall they be, —
All that cometh is vanity.

CHAP. xi. 8.

4. Let Mm rejoice in them all ; this includes every period
of life, old age as well as youth. Joy is to be cherished as
a present possession, not postponed nor merely recalled.
Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra takes up this same strain of
cheer and hope: —

" Our times are in his hand
Who saith, ' A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half ; trust God : see all, nor be afraid ! ' "

The first half of this stanza has been quoted to illustrate
Survey iv. 47.

5. Yet let him remember • both here and in 1. 16, below,
the word remember seems to be used for future things as
well as for past ; to include not merely recalling but re
flecting or pondering. While joy is as it were the spirit's
energy and motive power, reflection, memory, is the balance-
wheel and governor. Memory tempers joy, not so as to
impair, but so as to make it deep-founded and solid. A joy
that has discounted contingencies is not the prey of fate or
chance or evil conscience; its fibre is the more sterling for
its recognized obverse of shadow and sorrow.

" Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast :

Such feasting ended, then

As sure an end to men ;
Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast ? "

7. All that cometh is vanity ; if for no other reason, because

VII REJOICE, AND REMEMBER 347

REJOICE, 0 young man, in thy joyandthe

forward look
youth, lor young

CHAP. xi. 9.

it is not yet ; until it comes, it is an unreality, therefore not
to count as a determinator of mood and motive. But also,
as experience has abundantly shown (compare Survey i. 9,
66), when it has come to pass, has become an accomplished
fact, it is just as truly a vanity. The only reality to be
counted and built upon is the present moment of joyful
achievement (compare Survey i. 60, and note) ; anything
that we approach by " remembering " is unreal. Joy feeds
on the present ; memory on what no longer is, except as
lesson or warning.

8-15. This section, giving a detailed picture of the wise
joy of youth, is apparently intended to be set as a foil or
contrast over against the description of the encroaching in
firmities of age, in the next section. The style of the two
sections, with their lists of details beginning with " and,"
would suggest that they are given as companion pieces. A
notable distinction is that this section, as accordant with
the practical realities of life, is literal, while the next sec
tion, as dealing with the fancies of memory, is expressed
in imagery.

8. In thy youth • this morning period of life is chosen as
the fit period for rejoicing, not merely for the age (it is in
deed "vanity" like the rest, 1. 15), but because life is then
at the full tide, with all functions in normal and vigorous
play. This idea is reinforced by the parallel synonym,
" young manhood," which refers to the prime, what Brown
ing calls " our manhood's prime vigor." Rejoice, Koheleth

348 WORDS OF KOHELETH VII

And let thy heart cheer thee in the
days of thy young manhood ;
And walk thou in the ways of thy
10 heart,

And in the sight of thine eyes ;

CHAP. xi. 9.

says, in this. The counsel is nearly equivalent to, rejoice in
the healthy fullness of life. We might parallel it by Brown
ing's exclamation in Saul : —

" How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy ! "

10. The ways of thy heart . . . the sight of thine eyes ; as
Stevenson puts it : " All that is in the man in the larger
sense, what we call impression as well as what we call in
tuition, ... we must accept." Koheleth commits himself
fearlessly to the healthy play of young manhood ; virtually
saying that in the bounding tides of youthful life, with its
fresh enthusiastic abandon, there is a goodness, a beauty, a
soundness, which we are bound to respect. This was written,
it will be remembered, in an age wherein the Mosaic law
was accepted in its austerest expression, and wherein theories
of total depravity held the field in men's theology. Nor
does Koheleth deny the strain of evil in human nature ;
see Survey v. 4, and note. Even we of later days are so
imbued with the idea of innate depravity that the counsel
here given sounds hazardous. It is given in good faith and
unconditionally, however ; it accords with Koheleth's free
attitude toward the law, which, as we have seen (compare
Survey iv. 93-98, note), he construes liberally in conduct.
It is one of the results of his looking upon life not as a
theologian, but as a scientific and practical observer.

VII REJOICE, AND REMEMBER 349

And know that for all these God will

bring thee into judgment ;
And remove sorrow from thy heart,

CHAP. xi. 9, 10.

12. Into judgment - in our prevailing assumption that
young men left to themselves will go to the bad, we read
this clause as a threat ; as if Koheleth had said, Have your
fling, young man, but look out for disagreeable conse
quences. Some expositors have indeed belittled, not to
say soiled, this whole passage unspeakably. It is an as
sumption, however, to suppose that Koheleth would have
his young man look forward to judgment as if he were a
culprit or a trimmer. All the body of his counsel goes rather
toward self-respecting, self-justifying manhood. And in
common with right-minded Hebrews he looks upon coining
judgment as a refuge and revelation (see Survey ii. 49 ;
compare Psalms vii. 8 ; xxvi. 1), when the true assessment
of life shall be made, and when man can appeal to God
for having walked in his integrity. Judgment, to the He
brew mind, was a thing fervently longed for. If men pre
sumed on delay of judgment, it was because their hearts
were full-set to do evil (Survey v. 74); but it is not to
such men, it is rather to men rejoicing in the fullness of
their manhood, that the present counsel is directed. Such
men need have no fear of the " true appraisal " (Survey v.
18) which judgment will bring ; they will seek rather to
anticipate it in good sense and wisdom.

13. Remove sorrow . . . put away evil ; both the heart and
the flesh, the inner and the outer man, to be kept clean and
normal. This is the form that the counsel of life takes in
Koheleth's scientific view of things, corresponding to what
in religious dialect would be called being cleansed from sin.

350 WORDS OF KOHELETH VII

And put away evil from thy flesh ;
For youth and the morn of life are
15 vanity.

II

Memory to EEMEMBER also thy Creator, in the
temper Joy . - , .

days of thy young manhood,

CHAP. xi. 10, xii. 1.

It is to be noted that sorrow is to the heart what evil is to
the flesh, an alien element, a kind of poison, to be purged
away so that the real manhood may have free course. It is
as much a duty to be joyful as it is to be pure. — Koheleth
seems to have in mind, as regards the implication of this
buoyant young manhood, some such thought as is expressed
by Stevenson : " Every bit of brisk living, and above all if
it be healthful, is just so much gained upon the wholesale
filcher, death." Hence the setting of youth over against the
dreariness and decrepitude of old age.

15. Are vanity ; that is, as a period of existence, youth
and the morn of life are no more in themselves than is old
age (" all that corneth," 1. 7). The youth season is just the
glorious opportunity, when manhood's pulse beats strongest
and truest, to snatch joy from the shadow of vanity and
gain the good that is not vain.

16. Remember also thy Creator ; of the section here begin
ning, 11. 16-42, this is the one positive precept of counsel ;
all the rest, beginning with "ere yet," being its setting.
Remembering the Creator is about what we call reverence ;
see note 1. 5, above. It has already been virtually inculcated
in connection with the Temple service ; see Survey iii. 60,
62, and notes. Reverence is not to be regarded as an aus-

VII REJOICE, AND REMEMBER 351

Ere yet the evil days are come, while yet

Or drawn nigh the years when thou areiair.

shalt say,

CHAP. xii. 1.

terity to check and chill joy, but a thoughtful wisdom, to
deepen and temper it.

" Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell."

Reverence coupled with joy, the spontaneous movement of
the soul upward to its source and outward to its environ
ment, and all this in the fullness of manhood, while life's
path is still ascending, — this is Koheleth's bravely won
ideal. And men call him a pessimist !

17. Ere yet the evil days are come ; that is to say, remem
ber your Creator before you are driven to it as a sanctuary
or last resource ; remember Him as the Creator and source
of health and joy while everything breathes of full-orbed
life, rather than as the Author of decay and decrepitude.
A notable feature of this detailed description of the evil
days is that they are contemplated as not present but on
the way ; anticipated and analyzed, as it were, from a sta
tion of joy and reverence. The soul is bidden look over
into them from another region and make the most of its
contrasted present. It is the forewarned, forearmed condi
tion ; as if Koheleth intended to say, Do not tumble help
lessly into old age weakness and welter there with no wisdom
to offset it ; store up wisdom beforehand, so as to go through
that period with eyes and heart open. Then when the evil
days corne, you can feel you have assessed them ; they are
no surprise, no disintegrator of faith. And meanwhile asso
ciate your Creator with what is strongest and manliest ; let
Him share in your highest powers. — The implication of

352 WORDS OF KOHELETH VII

" No pleasure in them for me."
Ere yet are darkened the sun and the
20 light, the moon and the stars,

And the clouds return after the
rain ; —

CHAP. xn. 1, 2.

this passage, as connected with the preceding, is similar to
that of Survey v. 151. As in that place it says, Work, for
there is no ability to work in the grave, so here it says,
Remember thy Creator, for there is no pleasure of memory
from a consciousness of feebleness and decay. One is re
minded also of the " old and foolish king," in Survey iii. 44,
who is going down from wisdom and " knoweth not how to
take admonition any more." In all these Koheleth's thought
is, Take life on the up-grade.

20-42. Here begins a series of poetic pictures which has
been a favorite pasture-ground for the allegorists, who have
sought to conform them all to some one figurative situation.
A variety of analogies have been suggested ; the two prin
cipal ones being, that here is described the oncoming of a
storm, with its various perturbations so much greater in the
East, where storms are rare, than with us ; and that here is
described, in a kind of story, the progressive decay coming
upon the bodily members. The latter is the more likely
one, if a single basis of imagery is sought ; but the effect
of crowding each detail into one preconceived picture is to
jorce and belittle the idea. If we read the passage rather
as a collection of the natural images of oncoming feebleness
and decay, and think of each as an independent metaphor,
rather than as a constituent of a larger allegory, the por
trayal will yield more dignity as well as significance.

20. The suggestiveness of darkening light and returning

VII REJOICE, AND REMEMBER 353

In the day when the keepers of the
house tremble,

And the men of might bow them
selves,

And the grinders cease because they
are few,

And they that look out of the win
dows are darkened, 25

And closed are the doors to the street ;

CHAP. xii. 3, 4.

clouds is obvious enough without supposing a thunderstorm
to support them.

22. The keepers of the house ; those on whom the house
depends for work and defense ; the hands and arms, if one
must have recourse to allegory.

23. The men of might ; identifiable in the allegory with
the legs.

24. The grinders were important in an Eastern house,
where all the grain is ground by hand on the premises ; on
them depended, therefore, in large part the sustenance and
nourishment of the household. To say these denote the
teeth, which become fewer with age, is natural enough, but
a certain largeness is taken from the idea, which serves its
poetic purpose apart from such limitation.

v 25. They that look out of the ivindows • the women at an
Eastern lattice, whose presence is such a sign of life and
interest (compare Judges v. 28 ; Proverbs vii. 6). In the
body this would mean, of course, the eyes.

26. The doors to the street, through which communication
is made to and from the world ; allegorically, the senses in
general.

354 WORDS OF KOHELETH VII

When the sound of the mill groweth
faint,

And he riseth at the voice of the
sparrow,

And all the daughters of song are
brought low,

And they are afraid of that which is
30 high,

And terrors are in the way,

And the almond-tree beareth its blos
soms,

CHAP. xii. 4, 5.

27. The sound of the mill is the most constant indication
of activity in an Eastern house, an audible sign that the
work and functions of the household are in fullness and
order ; its gradual cessation, then, would figure the cessa
tion of the bodily functions.

28. When one is old and sleep is lighter, the first bird-
voice of the morning is sufficient to waken him. This seems
the most fitting interpretation of this clause ; to make it
refer to the piping voice of old age is needlessly to belittle
the figure.

29. The daughters of song may mean either the women of
the household happy and vocal at their work, or the tones
of the voice growing weak and unsure. In either case it
symbolizes the decay of the finer functions.

30. A characteristic of old age is to dread standing on
high places, and to be cautious of dangers and disturbances.

32. The almond-tree, with its abundant white blossoms,
is a figure of the white hairs of old age.

VII REJOICE, AND REMEMBER 355

And the grasshopper draggeth itself

wearily,

And the caper-berry f aileth ;
Because man goeth to his eternal

home, 35

And the mourners go about the

streets.

Ere yet the silver cord is sundered,
And the golden bowl is broken,
And the pitcher shattered at the

fountain,
And the wheel broken at the cistern ; 40

CHAP. xii. 5, 6.

33. The figure of the grasshopper is obscure ; but it may
be intended as a descriptive picture of the halting, ungrace
ful walk, or hitch, of the " shrunk shank " of age.

34. The caper-berry, with its pungent, peppery taste, is
an appetizer ; when it fails to stimulate, therefore, relish is
well-nigh gone.

36. The mourners are the hired professional mourners of
an Eastern town ; compare the flute-players of Matthew
ix. 23.

37-40. All these are speaking and beautiful figures of
the break-up of the bodily life ; and nothing is added to
their beauty or significance, and certainly nothing to their
dignity, by identifying them with the spinal cord, the skull,
the lungs, the heart, or whatever they may be thought to
figure. It is better to leave them in the large suggestive-
ness of metaphors, than to press them into details of an
allegory.

366 WORDS OF KOHELETH VII

And the dust return to earth as it was,
And the spirit return to God who
gave it.

CHAP. xii. 7.

41. And the dust return • this is the destiny that Kohe-
leth has all the while had in mind, the long poetic descrip
tion serving to accentuate it ; see Survey ii. 60.

42. To God who gave it • this is all Koheleth trusts him
self to say ; but he leaves the spirit in the same keeping
wherein it has ever been. The rest there is no one to tell.

Thus through these seven Surveys, wherein he has deeply
probed the turbid lot and labor of man, Koheleth has con
ducted his steady uncompromising induction to a supreme
earthly goal ; directing us on the one side to the vigor and
health of young manhood, in which he bids us rejoice ; and
on the other to the last feeble runnings of decaying old age,
in view of which he bids us, with the spirit of youth still
strong in us, remember Him who created all. The whole
book, from its first note of vanity to this last leave-taking
of earth, is conceived in one supreme idea, one homogeneous
conviction. What this is, let these few words sum up : —

LIFE IS AN ULTIMATE FACT. IT HAS NO EQUIVALENT ;
IT WILL ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE. IN WHATEVER ALLOT
MENT OF WORK AND WAGE ; IN WHATEVER EXPERIENCE OF
EASE OR HARDSHIP ; IN WHATEVER SEEN OR UNSEEN RANGE
OF BEING ; LIFE, UTTERLY REFUSING TO BE MEASURED BY
ANYTHING ELSE, MUST BE ITS OWN REWARD AND BLESSED
NESS, OR NOTHING.

Such, translated from the idiom of his day and nation
into ours, is Koheleth's undying message to the ages.

EPILOGUE

THE NAIL FASTENED

TTANITY of vanities, saith Ko- Thecon-

V cession of

heleth, all is vanity. vanity holds

AND further, since Koheleth was Koheieth's

Ideal of

wise, he still taught the people know- instruction

and author-
ledge; and he composed, and com- ship.

CHAP. xii. 8, 9.

The title of this Epilogue, it will be noted, is chosen from
the phrase in line 11, which describes the literary utility of
a course of thoughts like this.

LINE 1. Vanity of vanities ; the exclamation is appended
to the whole body of Koheieth's thought, making it end
where it began ; in token that, whatever compensation or
surplusage is found in the life of the soul, the same old
vanity remains, the creature made subject to vanity. It is
the mark of the worldly environment in which his era is
imprisoned.

4. He still taught ; we get here a glimpse of the class
of Hebrew sages who in an unofficial and disinterested way
enlightened the people in sane thinking. Their function, as
a class, in the nation seems to be recognized in Jeremiah
xviii. 18.

5. Composed, and compiled, and arranged; one of the very
few passages in the whole scripture wherein an author speaks

358 WORDS OF KOHELETH EP

piled, and arranged many lessons.
Koheleth sought to find words of
pleasantness ; and what was written
was upright, words of truth.

CHAP. xii. 10.

of his literary methods. It would seem from this that by
Koheleth's time the sage, who in earlier days had instructed
orally (compare Job xxix. 7-10), had become a kind of
professional maker of books. Such, at least, was Koheleth,
according to his own account ; and in this passage he men
tions the three methods he employed. We have what seem
to be traces of all these in the book before us. The maxims
which he inserts from the collection he has compiled are
sometimes, as we have seen (compare note, Survey vi. 31),
imperfectly joined to the rest ; they show the joints and
cement of insertion. Of the composed maxims, I should
judge Survey i. 22, and this Epilogue, 11. 15-17, to be good
specimens. The treatment on which he prides himself
most, however, as would appear from 11. 11, 12 (see note
there), is the arranging of his utterances into a continuous
and homogeneous collection or body of thought. This and
the inductive method (see Introductory Study, pp. 176 sqq.)
are his special contribution to the forms of the Wisdom
literature.

6. Many lessons- lit. "proverbs" (m'shalim). This was
the name given to the utterances of Wisdom, because from
the beginning they were expressed in sententious form,
embodying an antithesis, or a parallelism, or a similitude,
which said much in few and condensed words. Thus the
mashal, or proverb, became the distinctive term for Wis
dom lessons ; the word lesson, however, seems to me more
closely to express what it came to mean.

7-9. In these lines Koheleth gives his sense of what

EP THE NAIL FASTENED 359

Words of the wise are like goads ; 10
but like well-driven nails, rather, are
the heads of collections, given from
one shepherd. And for what is more

CHAP. xu. 11, 12.

literary quality he would impress on his subject-matter.
First, the words should give pleasure in the reading, be
attractive in style. Secondly, they should be sincere, giving
the truth according to conviction and reality. Beauty of
form must not be used to conceal a thought not fully veri
fied. This latter was evidently a cardinal point with him ;
he was conscious, doubtless, of holding a view of truth
which, as it would be at variance with his age's sentiment,
must be the fruit of honest and seasoned conviction.

10-12. Two similes here give the effect of two different
forms of mashal literature. Professor Paul Haupt (Orien
tal Studies, p. 277) thus explains them : " An isolated
maxim, a single proverb, is like the point of an ox-goad ;
it pricks one particular spot for a moment, urging on and
stimulating, but has no lasting effect. Sayings, however,
which are systematically arranged in a special collection
forming a connected whole are as impressive as nails firmly
driven in. They infix themselves for ever in your memory,
just as firmly as nails driven into a board or the like ; they
have a firm hold on you."

12. Heads of collections ; lit. "lords" or "masters." The
phrase seems to refer to the sayings which are used as
topic-sentences to indicate the general trend or subject of
a section or paragraph at the head of which they stand.
Such sayings do not stand isolated ; there is a connected
body of sayings flowing from them. Instances of this may
be seen, Survey ii. 1; v. 1, 35.

13. One shepherd ; Koheleth's figure for the writer who

360 WORDS OF KOHELETH EP

than these, my son, be admonished :
15 of making many books there is no
end ; and much study is a weariness
of the flesh.

THE end of the matter ; this heard,

CHAP. xii. 12, 13.

gathers the separate maxims into one body of thought. The
fact that they are fused in one mind, marshaled by a person
who is concerned with one correlated body of thought, as
a shepherd collects his sheep in one flock, is an element in
their power. This, it will be remembered, is the first at
tempt to describe a philosophy composed otherwise than in
detached maxims, as in the Book of Proverbs. The descrip
tion is somewhat clumsily made, and Koheleth has to coin
his own terms and figures for it ; but it is very suggestive.

15. Of making many books • it would seem from this that
the new wave of philosophic thought in Koheleth's time
had stimulated literary activity, and given rise to many
books for the most part vapid and ephemeral. Koheleth's
mention of them accords with his irritation at the abundance
of foolish words ; he is aware how ill-founded and superfi
cial they are. One or two truths well mastered will save the
necessity of wading through so much to so little purpose.

16. Much study is a weariness ; the implication is that the
problem of life may be studied too curiously and too dubi
ously, as if it were a remote mystery ; whereas the essen
tials of it are much nearer the surface. " The word is nigh
thee." He is steering toward the end of the whole matter,
which heard, all is heard. Beyond this all that study yields
is weariness.

18. This heard ; I have added this preliminary phrase to

EP THE NAIL FASTENED 361

all is heard : Fear God and keep His The sour,
commandments, for this is the sum of 20 tKentre

i i -n /-* i °f manhood,

manhood. For God will bring every ready for

Judgment.

work into judgment, with every hid
den thing, whether it be good or
whether it be evil.

CHAP. xii. 13, 14.

emphasize rightly the force of the clause ; it is literally,
"all is heard."

19. Fear God, and keep His commandments ; no other pre
cept could better sum up the whole course of Koheleth's
counsel ; consider what a part the fear of God plays, see
note, Survey iv. 101. So far from being a pious addition to
save the orthodoxy, as some have been pleased to conjec
ture, it is homogeneous with both the letter and the spirit
of the whole book.

20. The sum of manhood; lit. « the whole of man." This
gives it for Koheleth's era of legalism, and for the data of
life which he could see. Nor is it inadequate for any dis
pensation ; it simply gives the pre-Christian ideal of man
hood, before the fullness of adult manhood, with its immor
tal outlook, had come to light. And it is noble and strong.

22. Inty judgment ; this last assertion has been much
questioned, as if it were not in the strain of Koheleth's ag
nostic and truculent mood. But judgment to come is one
of his prevailing ideas ; see note, Survey vii. 12. His faith
in the light which, though he sees it not, yet he knows is
sure to come, takes the form of a belief in judgment, when
things will be revealed as they are.

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