holly political and moral. As to the Semitic religions, they
are as little philosophical as possible. Moses and Mahomet were not
men of speculation; they were men of action. It was in proposing
action to their fellow-countrymen, and to their contemporaries, that
they governed humanity. Jesus, in like manner, was not a theologian,
or a philosopher, having a more or less well-composed system. In order
to be a disciple of Jesus, it was not necessary to sign any formulary,
or to pronounce any confession of faith; one thing only was
necessary--to be attached to him, to love him. He never disputed about
God, for he felt Him directly in himself. The rock of metaphysical
subtleties, against which Christianity broke from the third century,
was in nowise created by the Founder. Jesus had neither dogma nor
system, but a fixed personal resolution, which, exceeding in intensity
every other created will, directs to this hour the destinies of
humanity.

The Jewish people had the advantage, from the captivity of Babylon up
to the Middle Ages, of being in a state of the greatest tension. This
is why the interpreters of the spirit of the nation during this long
period seemed to write under the action of an intense fever, which
placed them constantly either above or below reason, rarely in its
middle path. Never did man seize the problem of the future and of his
destiny with a more desperate courage, more determined to go to
extremes. Not separating the lot of humanity from that of their
little race, the Jewish thinkers were the first who sought for a
general theory of the progress of our species. Greece, always confined
within itself, and solely attentive to petty quarrels, has had
admirable historians; but before the Roman epoch, it would be in vain
to seek in her a general system of the philosophy of history,
embracing all humanity. The Jew, on the contrary, thanks to a kind of
prophetic sense which renders the Semite at times marvellously apt to
see the great lines of the future, has made history enter into
religion. Perhaps he owes a little of this spirit to Persia. Persia,
from an ancient period, conceived the history of the world as a series
of evolutions, over each of which a prophet presided. Each prophet had
his _hazar_, or reign of a thousand years (chiliasm), and from these
successive ages, analogous to the Avataer of India, is composed the
course of events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd. At the end of the
time when the c