the German language there, and made himself acquainted in some measure with the sciences,” continued his study of the sciences, and soon collected a fair library of German books.[42] Saadia, Bahya, Halevi, Ibn Ezra, Crescas, Bedersi, Levi ben Gerson (whom Goldenthal calls the Hebrew Kant), Albo, Abarbanel, and others whose works deserve a high place in the history of Jewish philosophy, were on the whole fairly represented in the libraries, and diligently studied in the numerous yeshibot and batte midrashim.

Thus the enlightenment which dawned upon France, Germany, and England cast a glow even on the Slavonic Jews, despite the Chinese wall of disabilities that hemmed them in.  Unfortunately, this only helped to render them dissatisfied with their wretched lot, without affording them the means of ameliorating it.  While the Jews in Western Europe profited and were encouraged by the example of their Christian neighbors; while, in addition to their innate thirst for learning, they had everywhere else political and civil preferments to look forward to, in Russo-Poland not only were such outside stimuli absent, but the Slavonic Jews had to struggle against obstacles and hindrances at every step.  No such heaven on earth could be dreamed of there.  The country was still in a most barbarous state.  Those who wished to perfect themselves in any of the sciences had to leave home and all and go to a foreign land, and had to study, as they were bidden to study the Talmud, “lishmah,” that is, for its own sake.  This is the distinguishing feature between the German and Slavonic Maskilim during the eighteenth century.  The cry of the former was, “Become learned, lest the nations say we are not civilized and deny us the wealth, respect, and especially the equality we covet!” The latter were humbly seeking after the truth, either because they could better elucidate the Talmud, or because, as they held, it was their truth, of which the nations had deprived them during their long exile.[43] They were unlike their German brethren in another respect.  Almost all of them were “self-made men,” autodidacts in the truest sense.  Lacking the advantages of secular schools, they culled their first information from scanty, antiquated Hebrew translations.  Maimon learned the Roman alphabet from the transliteration of the titles on the fly-leaves of some Talmudic tracts; Doctor Behr, from Wolff’s Mathematics.  But no sooner was the impetus given than it was followed by an insatiable craving for more and more of the intellectual manna, for a wider and wider horizon.  “Look,” says Wessely, “look at our Russian and Polish brethren who immigrate hither, men great in Torah, yet admirers of the sciences, which, without the guiding help of teachers, they all master to such perfection as to surpass even a Gentile sage!"[44] Such self-education was, of course, not without unfavorable results.  Never having enjoyed the advantage of a systematic elementary training, the enthusiasts sometimes lacked the very rudiments of knowledge, though engaged in the profoundest speculations of philosophy.  “As our mothers in Egypt gave birth to their children before the mid-wife came,” writes Pinsker somewhat later,[45] “even so it is with the intellectual products of our brethren:  before one becomes acquainted with the grammar of a language, he masters its classic and scientific literature!”