passion has either spent itself or passed unnoticed, there must be left a common stock of interests and sympathies, one source of joy and sorrow and hope. In true and happy marriage there must be a community of love, a community of respect and reverence, and a community of sentiment, or religion. Every marriage not based on these principles is an altar built for the sacrifice of human happiness; for as surely as effect always follows cause, it will result in misery, strife, dissension and despair. George Eliot, the great dissecter of human hearts, has truly and tersely stated the situation : "Mirah's was not a nature that would bear dividing against itself; and even if love won her consent to marry a man who was not of her race and religion, she would never be happy in acting against that strong native bias which would still reign in her conscience as a remorse.' If reliance is to be placed in statistics, we must conclude that nature herself stamps her mark of disapproval upon intermarriage. A comparative table of the productiveness of one hundred marriages between the years 1875 and 1881, showed the following averages:42

9941

Where both parents were Protestants, 430 children.

Where both parents were Roman Catholics, 520 children.

Where both parents were Jews, 441 children.

Where one a Protestant and the other a Catholic, 325 children. Where father was Christian and mother a Jewess, 165 children. Where father a Jew and the mother Christian, 131 children.

Of course, I do not mean to depreciate or even doubt the power and permanency of true love. But true love is something higher and deeper than mere infatuation. Infatuation is love run mad. True love is the perfect union of two souls on social, intellectual and spiritual bases. The love that actuates marriages in which this is lacking, as is most often the case in intermarriage, is perverted love.

To sum up: The Scriptures and science, history and human experience, Jewish teachings and traditions, conscience and com

41 Daniel Deronda, Vol. I, Bk. IV, Chap. xxxii.

12 Joseph Jacobs' "Studies in Judaism.”

mon sense, all point against intermarriage. If the conclusions here set forth are correct, I feel, therefore, justified in stating, nay, compelled to say, that intermarriage is inadvisable, undesirable and unpermissible.

H

CRESCAS AND SPINOZA.

A Memorial Paper in Honor of the Five Hundredth Anniversary of the "Or Adonoi."

BY PROF. DAVID NEUMARK, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, O.

INTRODUCTION.

It was in the past generation that Jewish scholars recognized that Spinoza is dependent on Jewish literature, mostly on Crescas. It was M. Joël who emphasized this dependence and showed in a conclusive manner that the basic thoughts of Spinoza's system were taken from the book "Or Adonoi” of Crescas, and that even the new thoughts in Spinoza's "Ethices" are to be derived rather from his attitude towards the philosophy of Crescas than from that towards the philosophy of Decartes (cf. Beitraege zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Crescas). However, it is not this question with which we have to deal in the present essay. Not the relation between Spinoza's "Ethices" and the philosophy of Crescas do I intend to make the subject of a new investigation, although many a new view may be unfolded also on this old question. I hope to take up this task at another time and in another connection. For the present I aim to point out a new feature in Spinoza's dependence on Crescas, in addition to that discovered by Joël and others. The thesis I have to set forth and to defend in the following chapters concerns the relations between Spinoza's "Tractatus theologico-politicus" and the book "Or Adonoi”; a question which, besides its material importance, is of great significance as a bit of literary history, one of the chief viewpoints of this treatise, and as an evidence of the influence of the book of this prominent Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages on Jewish literature, and the literature of the world. (Joël in his exposition of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, cf. Beitraege, points chiefly to the elements. taken from Maimuni, mentioning Crescas only in some subsidiary questions, not seeing the close relation between the two works.)

And as it is well known that the book "Or Adonoi" is framed

within the theory of dogmas, it is advisable to look also at the Tractatus from this viewpoint. We shall see that the conception of the Tractatus as an exposition of a theory of dogmas is not only justified, but that, moreover, this viewpoint is the only one from which this book can be successfully analyzed and adequately understood. Therefore my task is a double one. I have to present the theory of Crescas as to dogmas, paying special attention to those aspects of this theory from which Spinoza started out, and departed in some principal points from his master, and on which he built up his own theory of Dogmas. Such is the subject of the first chapter of this treatise. The second chapter is devoted to the second part of our theme, viz: the presentation of the Tractatus from the viewpoint of Dogmas; an exposition which discloses the most decisive features in the dependence of this book, both in its principal ideas and in its literary form, on "Or Adonoi."

Having found that Spinoza in his first great work is influenced and guided by a Jewish philosopher of the character and the prominence of Crescas, we shall see in a new light also his philosophy developed in his second great work, in the "Ethices," as far as its relation to Judaism in general and especially to the philosophy of Crescas is concerned. We shall see that the spiritual protoplasts from which the system of Spinoza has sprung forth in order to grow and develop and to become a potent movent in philosophy and culture, are rooted deeply in the last great work of Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages. The book "Or Adonoi," the quinque-centenarian jubilee of which we celebrate by this Memorial Paper, serves as the bridge from Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages to the New Philosophy. Nor is the prominence of this book in its historical consequences confined to its influence upon Spinoza as a philosopher and as a representative of the demand of freedom for science and philosophy and their teachings. We shall see that Spinoza as the first modern Biblical critic, too, was influenced greatly by the book of Crescas.

This is one more reason why I connect with this essay the "Excursus on Urim ve-Thummim," embracing the question whether or not the passages treating the "Choshen-Mishpot," the “Urim veThummim," and the "Goral" were contained in the original "Priestly

Code." In general it was Crescas to whom I owe, partly at least, the realization that the question of Dogmas in Judaism is to be solved on the ground of Biblical criticism and of the history of religion. Of course, not that positive element of the book "Or Adonoi," by which Spinoza was led to Biblical criticism, was of any help to me. In our days other sources and other stimuli certainly lead people to cultivate Biblical criticism, who endeavor to understand Judaism on the basis of its literary sources. Nevertheless, I admit that the same negative element in the book "Or Adonoi" which forced Spinoza to Biblical criticism, was to me also an additional stimulus to treat the problem of Dogmas in Judaism in the way I did in my as yet unpublished Hebrew work "History of Jewish Dogmas," an outline of which appeared in the Sample-Volume of the contemplated Hebrew Encyclopedia ("Otsar hay-Yahaduth," ed. "Achiasaf," Warsaw, 1906, p. 1-75). This is especially true of that excursus. It was the fact that Crescas counts the belief in the efficiency of the Urim ve-Thummim among the dogmas of the same degree of importance as Creation and Retribution which led me to the special research on the question how far this view can be justified from our standpoint that no teaching is to be claimed to have the significance of a dogma, unless it is emphasized as such in one of the last two Books of Covenant (Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code, the latter taken in its larger form after it had been combined with the "Book of Holiness" in one composition). And this is the first, natural reason for the connection of the excursus on this question with the present essay. It was in the system of Crescas, where the strangeness of the Urim ve-Thummim to the general characteristic of the Priestly Code became clear to me, and also the necessity to test the sources with regard to the genuineness of the Urim ve-Thummim and those connected therewith. And if Spinoza's idea of ascertaining the Dogmas by Biblical criticism is to be derived from his attitude toward the book "Or Adonoi," a fact we will recognize, then our excursus is one special instance of the remarkably manifold efficiency of this book.