70 INTELLECTUAL AND 



notice of the Esquimaux,* Dr. King says, " that these people 

 have preserved, like many other uncivilised races, a vague re- 

 membrance of the creation and of the deluge, and that they 

 believe in future rewards and punishments." In his religious 

 zeal, Dr. King forgets that if the Esquimaux had been able 

 to bring a confused tradition of even the deluge and the crea- 

 tion from the valley of the Euphrates, it was impossible it could 

 have been the same with a belief in future rewards and punish- 

 ments, seeing that the Jews themselves never possessed this 

 belief before their contact with Assyrian civilisation. We may 

 read in Dr. Brecher's excellent workf the whole history of the 

 development of this belief in the immortality of the soul. If 

 the German doctor wishes piously to prove that the Jews 

 ought, morally, to have always believed in this immortality, at 

 all events, his zeal has been able to invent real proofs, which 

 in fact, are wanting. The famous scheol, which is mentioned 

 so often in old Hebrew books, appears to be merely the king- 

 dom of the dead, and not that of souls, like hell, Tartarus, the 

 Elysian fields, and Paradise ; the scheol is but an ideal repre- 

 sentation of the tomb. Even at the time when the Jews had 

 generally adopted the ideas of their neighbours, during the 

 Talmudic period, the belief in the immortality of the soul, if 

 it existed, was neither completely clear nor well reasoned, since 

 they refused all participation in a future life to those who 

 denied the resurrection and the last judgment, " which was 

 equivalent to entire annihilation.";); To believe this, is cer- 

 tainly not to believe in the immortality of the soul, since they 

 regarded eternal life not as a necessary consequence, but as a 

 recompense for good principles, and having faith in them. 

 Such an inconsistency is the clearest possible proof that, even 

 at this period, these ideas had not undergone the change which 

 brought them to the actual point of clearness. They were 



inhabitants acknowledge Saint Thomas, whom they call Zorne (changing the 

 Th into Z, according to their dialect) ; and they have a tradition that he once 

 journeyed through this country." His letter is fully given by Meremberg, 

 Historia Naturae, fol., Antuerpige, 1635. 



* " On the Intellectual Character of the Esquimaux" (Edinburgh New 

 Philosophical Journal, vol. xxxviii, p. 306, October 1844 to April 1845. 



f U Lmmortalite de I'ame chez les Juifs, transl. by I. Cohen, 12uio, Paris, 1857. 



J See Brecher, L'liiMiwrtaUtt dc V<ime chez les Juifs, p. 81. 



