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.