THE BOOK OF KOHELETH; OR, ECCLESIASTES.
CHAPTER I.
THE WISE MAN TURNED AUTHOR AND PHILOSOPHER.
. . . Il mondo invecchia,
E invecchiando intristisce.—Tasso, Aminta.
In passing from the book of Ecclesiasticus to that of Ecclesiastes,
we are conscious of breathing an entirely different
intellectual atmosphere. 'Seek not out the things that are too
hard for thee,' said Sirach, 'for thou hast no need of the secret
things' (iii. 21, 22), but the book now before us is the record
of a thinker, disappointed it is true, but too much in earnest
to give up thinking. Of meditative minds there was no lack
in this period of Israel's history. The writers of the 119th
and several other Psalms, as well as Jesus the son of Sirach,
had pondered over the ideal life, but our author (the only
remaining representative of a school of writers[1]) was meditative
in a different sense from any of these. He could not have
said with the latter, 'I prayed for wisdom before the temple'
(Ecclus. li. 14), nor with the former, 'Thy commandment is
exceeding broad' (Ps. cxix. 96). The idea of the religious
primacy of Israel awakened in his mind no responsive enthusiasm.
We cannot exactly say that he conceals the place of
his residence,[2] but he has certainly no overpowering interest in
