at the sacred fount of
poesy, and are consecrated by its limpid waters to give praise and
thanksgiving to Him that reigns on high; may the poet's words ever
remain applicable to the matrons and maidens of Israel:[35]

"Pure woman stands in life's turmoil
A rose in leafy bower;
Her aspirations and her toil
Are tinted like a flower.

Her thoughts are pious, kind, and true,
In evil have no part;
A glimpse of empyrean blue
Is seen within her heart."

MOSES MAIMONIDES

"Who is Maimonides? For my part, I confess that I have merely heard the
name." This naive admission was not long since made by a well-known
French writer in discussing the subject of a prize-essay, "Upon the
Philosophy of Maimonides," announced by the _academie universitaire_ of
Paris. What short memories the French have for the names of foreign
scholars! When the proposed subject was submitted to the French minister
of instruction, he probably asked himself the same question; but he was
not at a loss for an answer; he simply substituted Spinoza for
Maimonides. To be sure, Spinoza's philosophy is somewhat better known
than that of Maimonides. But why should a minister of instruction take
that into consideration? The minister and the author--both presumably
over twenty-five years of age--might have heard this very question
propounded and answered some years before. They might have known that
their colleague Victor Cousin, to save Descartes from the disgrace of
having stood sponsor to Spinozism, had established a far-fetched
connection between the Dutch philosopher and the Spanish, pronouncing
Spinoza the devoted disciple of Maimonides. Perhaps they might have been
expected to know, too, that Solomon Munk, through his French
translation of Maimonides' last work, had made it possible for modern
thinkers to approach the Jewish philosopher, and that soon after this
translation was published, E. Saisset had written an article upon Jewish
philosophy in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which he gave a popular
and detailed exposition of Maimonides' religious views. All this they
did not know, and, had they known it, they surely would not have been so
candid as the German thinker, Heinrich Ritter, who, in his "History of
Christian Philosophy," frankly admits: "My impression was that mediaeval
philosophy was not indebted to Jewish metaphysicians for any original
line of thought, but M. Munk's discovery convinced me of