ycle of chiliasms shall be exhausted, the complete
paradise will come. Men then will live happy; the earth will be as one
plain; there will be only one language, one law, and one government
for all. But this advent will be preceded by terrible calamities.
Dahak (the Satan of Persia) will break his chains and fall upon the
world. Two prophets will come to console mankind, and to prepare the
great advent.[1] These ideas ran through the world, and penetrated
even to Rome, where they inspired a cycle of prophetic poems, of which
the fundamental ideas were the division of the history of humanity
into periods, the succession of the gods corresponding to these
periods--a complete renovation of the world, and the final advent of a
golden age.[2] The book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and certain
parts of the Sibylline books,[3] are the Jewish expression of the same
theory. These thoughts were certainly far from being shared by all;
they were only embraced at first by a few persons of lively
imagination, who were inclined toward strange doctrines. The dry and
narrow author of the book of Esther never thought of the rest of the
world except to despise it, and to wish it evil.[4] The disabused
epicurean who wrote Ecclesiastes, thought so little of the future,
that he considered it even useless to labor for his children; in the
eyes of this egotistical celibate, the highest stroke of wisdom was to
use his fortune for his own enjoyment.[5] But the great achievements
of a people are generally wrought by the minority. Notwithstanding all
their enormous defects, hard, egotistical, scoffing, cruel, narrow,
subtle, and sophistical, the Jewish people are the authors of the
finest movement of disinterested enthusiasm which history records.
Opposition always makes the glory of a country. The greatest men of a
nation are those whom it puts to death. Socrates was the glory of the
Athenians, who would not suffer him to live amongst them. Spinoza was
the greatest Jew of modern times, and the synagogue expelled him with
ignominy. Jesus was the glory of the people of Israel, who crucified
him.

[Footnote 1: _Yacna_, xiii. 24: Theopompus, in Plut., _De Iside et
Osiride_, sec. 47; _Minokhired_, a passage published in the
_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft_, i., p.
263.]

[Footnote 2: Virg., Ecl. iv.; Servius, at v. 4 of this Eclogue;
Nigidius, quoted by Servius, at v. 10.]

[Footnote 3: Book iii., 97-817.]

[Footnote 4: