[38] Coheleth's description is so true and pertinent, it hits so many of our modern faults and sins, that I am obliged to cite my authority for every paragraph lest I should be suspected of putting a private and personal interpretation on these ancient words.
[39] M. de Lamennais—the founder of the most religious school of thinkers in modern France, from whom such men as Count Montalembert, Père Lacordaire, and Maurice Guérin, drew their earliest inspiration—asks, "Do you know what it is that makes man the most suffering of all creatures?" and replies, "It is that he has one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, and that he is torn asunder, not by four horses, as in the horrible old times, but between two worlds."
[40] Horace, Ep. 6, Lib. I:
"Virtutem verba putant, ut
Lucum ligna."
[41] "There are three crowns; of the law, the priesthood, and the kingship: but the crown of a good name is greater than them all."—Talmud.
[42] So in the hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus, as rendered by the Dean of Wells:
"Thou alone knowest how to change the odd To even, and to make the crooked straight; And things discordant find accord in Thee. Thus in one whole Thou blendest ill with good, So that one law works on for evermore."
[43] Not, however, that the sentiment was confined to the East. The Greek poets have many such sayings as, "A woman is a burden full of ills;" and, "Where women are, all evils there are found."
[44] To cite only one instance out of many—other instances may be found in the Introduction—let the reader recall the Emperor Caligula, and refer, for example, to his reception of the Alexandrian Jews, as recorded by Philo, Legat ad Caium, cc. 44, 45; or by Merivale, in his History of the Romans, chap. xlvii., pp. 47-50; or by Milman, in his History of the Jews, Book xii., pp. 141-45. He will then know, to quote the phrase of Apollonius of Tyana, what "the kind of beast called a tyrant" is or may be.
[45] What Coheleth means by the king being "a child" is best explained by Isa. iii. 12: "As for my people, their ruler is a wilful child, and women rule over him."