Never was such a picture painted of utter scepticism, of a mind wholly darkened, and without any remaining faith in God or truth.

These three books mark the three periods of the life of Solomon.

The Song of Songs shows us his abounding youth, full of poetry, fire, and charm.

The Proverbs give his ripened manhood, wise and full of all earthly knowledge,—­Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates, and Franklin, all in one.

And Ecclesiastes represents the darkened and gloomy scepticism of his old age, when he sank as low down as he had before gone up.  But though so sad and dark, yet it is not without gleams of a higher and nobler joy to come.  Better than anything in Proverbs are some of the noble sentiments breaking out in Ecclesiastes, especially at the end of the book.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful description of a doubt so deep, a despair so black, that nothing in all literature can be compared to it.  It describes, in the person of Solomon, utter scepticism born of unlimited worldly enjoyment, knowledge, and power.

The book begins by declaring that all is vanity, that there is nothing new under the sun, no progress in any direction, but all things revolving in an endless circle, so that there is neither meaning nor use in the world.[363] It declares that work amounts to nothing, for one cannot do any really good thing; that knowledge is of no use, but only produces sorrow; that pleasure satiates.[364] Knowledge has only this advantage over ignorance, that it enables us to see things as they are, but it does not make them better, and the end of all is despair.[365] Sensual pleasure is the only good.[366] Fate and necessity rule all things.  Good and evil both come at their appointed time.  Men are cheated and do not see the nullity of things, because they have the world in their heart, and are absorbed in the present moment.[367]

Men are only a higher class of beasts.  They die like beasts, and have no hereafter.[368]

In the fourth chapter the writer goes more deeply into this pessimism.  He says that to die is better than to live, and better still never to have been born.  A fool is better than a wise man, because he does nothing and cares for nothing.[369]

Success is bad, progress is an evil; for these take us away from others, and leave us lonely, because above them and hated by them.[370]

Worship is idle.  Do not offer the sacrifice of fools, but stop when you are going to the Temple, and return.  Do not pray.  It is of no use.  God does not hear you.  Dreams do not come from God, but from what you were doing before you went to sleep.  Eat and drink, that is the best.[371] All men go as they come.

So the dreary statement proceeds.  Men are born for no end, and go no one can tell where.  Live a thousand years, it all comes to the same thing.  Who can tell what is good for a man in this shadowy, empty life?[372]