CHAPTER III.
THE SOCIAL SPIRIT IN WORLD-LITERATURE.
§ 71. The story of a literature's decline and fall, as exemplified by Alexandrian and Roman cosmopolitanism, is curiously like and unlike that of Israel's decadence. Hebrews, like Athenians, before the destruction of their political independence had lost much of their old communal sympathies. Perhaps no better exemplification of the principle that the movement of progressive societies is from communal to individual life can be found all the world over than the contrast between the inherited guilt of the Decalogue and the strenuous assertion of personal responsibility by Ezekiel. "Behold," says the nâbî, "all souls are to me thus—as a soul the father and as a soul the son; thus are they to me; the sinning soul, it shall die. … The sinning soul, it shall die; son shall not bear the father's sin, nor father bear the son's sin; the righteousness of the righteous shall be on himself, and the iniquity of the iniquitous shall be on himself."[1] Between the period at which the Hebrew castes of priests had collected the customs of the allied tribes and the age of Ezekiel we may thus infer that a great social change had taken place. Clan life among the priestly and landowning aristocracy of Israel, as
- ↑ Ezek. xviii. 4, 5, 20
