But the others thought a long while, trying to find an answer to their doubts in that passage of the master.
Meir answered thoughtfully:
"There are men who, like the celestial beings of which the sage talks, raise their souls toward the Perfection. They know that there is perfection, and they try to take from it Wisdom and Goodness for themselves. But there are also people who, like those stars which float more heavily upward, do not long for the perfection, and do not rise through such longing. Such people keep their souls very low. . . ."
Now they understood. Joy beamed from all faces. What a small crumb of knowledge it took to make joyful these poor, and at the same time rich, souls!
Meir seized the book from his friend's hands, and read from another leaf:
"The angels themselves are not all equal. They are classed one above the other, like the steps of a ladder, and the highest among them is the Spirit producing thought and knowledge. This Spirit animates Reason, and Hagada calls it Prince of the World—Sar-ha-Olam!"
"The highest angel is the Spirit producing thought and knowledge, and Hagada calls it the Prince of the world," repeated the choir of young voices.
Their doubts were scattered. Learning had reawakened respect in their minds, and longing in their hearts, and passed before them in the form of the Angel of Angels, flying over the world arrayed in princely purple, with a shining veil wrought by his thought. Reverie sat on their foreheads and in their eyes. The reverie of a quiet evening covered the meadow blooming around them. Before them purple clouds hung above the forest, hiding behind them the shield of the sun. Behind them the green grove, sunk in dusky shadows, was slumbering motionlessly.
Over the meadow and fields floated Eliezer's silvery voice:
"I saw the spirit of my people when I slumbered," Jehovah's pale cantor began to sing.