Excerpt from The Jewish Primary School: A Lecture
The development of the intellect is the development of man, says Auguste Comte, one of the profoundest thinkers of modern times. He does not fail to recognize the momentous influence exerted by factors other than mentality entering into the evolution of society, but he wished to emphasize this point, that whether a single nation is to be appraised, or an epoch in the history of mankind as a whole, it is in every case intellectual attainment by which the degree of development must be gauged. In point of fact, it is, as Comte says, "the heart that propounds all questions; to solve them is the part of the intellect." An old Palestinian saying quoted in the Talmud puts the same idea in empiric form: "He who has knowledge, has everything; he who lacks knowledge, lacks everything." And this proverb in turn is an epigrammatic summing up of the Biblical notion of the Hakam, "the wise," "the knowing one," who is at the same time the good and pious man, the just, the God-fearing, the truthful, and the pure.
Because writers take too little account of this general historical principle set up by Comte, and at the same time are blind to the peculiarity of Jewish history in particular, a misunderstanding has arisen regarding the nature of the transition from the Prophets to the Scribes, from Biblical Judaism to Rabbinical Judaism. The intellectual endeavors of the Scribes are apt to be considered as a degeneration and decline from the idealism which pervades the conception of life laid down in the Scriptures. The truth is that the Scribes succeeded where the Prophets had failed.
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