Bible exegesis with MENACHEM BEN-CHELBO, the author of a commentary on the whole bible, of which a few fragments are only preserved. His brother was SIMEON BEN-CHELBO CARA also SIMEON HA-DARSHAN, the author of a famous collection of Midrashim, on almost every verse of the Old Testament which he published under the name of Yalkut. This vast thesaurus contains a condensed commentary on the entire Old Testament, and gives the substance of more than fifty books, many of which are lost. The Yalkut has often been printed since its first publication in 1521. We cannot omit to mention RABBI MOSES OF NARBONNE, a pupil of Rabbi Gershon, and teacher of Nathan, the author of the Aruch. Moses composed a commentary on the Pentateuch and on other parts of the Old Testament. These expositions are only known from the copious and numer ous fragments which we find by Raymond Martin in his Pugio Fidei (Paris, 1651; Leipsic, 1687,) both in the original Hebrew and in a Latin translation, and others. On account of his pulpit eloquence Rabbi Moses received the honorary surname of ha-Drashan or "The Preacher." To this time, probably, belongs The Book Zerubabel, the work of an Italian mystic, according to Grätz, between 1050-1060. It is an apocalyptic book, written in the form of a dialogue between Zerubabel and the angel Metatron, about the birth, education, life, war and death of Armillu, who is about to appear after the war between Gog and Magog, etc. The wonders of the Messiah are to be seen, between 1063 and 1068. It was first printed in Constantinople in 1579 and of late it was published by Jellinek in his Beth ha-midash (vol. II. p. 54 seq., Leipsic 1853). Among the Karaites, the literature of this time is hardly worth mentioning. The only representative was JACOB BEN REUBEN, the author of a biblical commentary, entitled Sefer ha- Oshér, written about 1050, and who probably lived in the Byzantine Empire. The study of Hebrew grammar, which they cultivated so much at their first start, was now so neglected, that Ali Ibn Sulaiman, the author of a Hebrew Lexicon in the Arabic lan guage was obliged to accept Ibn Hayug's grammatical rules and notes.— BERNHARD PICK. THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. IT has often been remarked that men and women after middle age, and sometimes before that period, are much averse to change of any sort. They share Montaigne's aversion to novelty. "Je suis desgouté de nouvelleté quelque visage qu'elle porte," remarks that genial old philosopher. Without perhaps actually stating the opinion that "Whatever is, is right," we may yet say that deep down in the hearts of men and women who have passed their first youth is the firm conviction that whatever was good enough for them and their fathers is good enough for the growing generation. But as an able woman, one who herself felt acutely the cramping and narrowing influences that so fetter the lives of women, has said, "To delight in doing things because our fathers did them is good if it shuts out nothing better; it enlarges the range of affection-and affection is the broadest basis of good in life." And it is because one believes that by the opposition to the movement for the Higher Education of Women much good will be shut out, that one is much dismayed by the antagonism displayed towards it. Many and various have been the opinions expressed on this subject, and so general has been the bulk of publicly expressed opinion against this higher education, as almost to justify the head of one of the best of our colleges for women in her complaint that "public opinion is very much against our work." But to those who believe in the truth of their cause, opposition, however general, can never damp their ardor; and they are further comforted by the reflection that "in human affairs no extension of belief, however widespread, is per se evidence of truth." The objections that have been urged against this movement may be shortly summarized as follows:-The opponents of higher education for women tell us that it will so tax and enfeeble the energies of women that their constitutions will prove unequal to the strain. Nay, with a cool assumption of the point at issue, characteristic, one regrets to say, of the opponents of this movement, they tell us that "women, though they may give up every thought of matrimony, are unequal to the strain, and had better remain unequal." Further, however, probably with an uncomfortable conviction that women, by virtue of this fatal higher education, have already accomplished a good deal, it is argued that, even should they succeed in rivalling men in work hitherto confined to men, the women's strength will be so exhausted that they will prove unequal to the further strain entailed by the duties of matrimony with its consequent motherhood. The result of this enfeeblement will be that the children of such highly educated women will be weak and immature, and so there will be perpetuated, not only fewer children-not certainly an unmixed evil-but that these children will, in the natural course of events, bring forth descendants unable to survive in the battle of life. And we learn from a woman, herself of considerable ability, that this evil result and more has already ensued, short as is the time during which this higher education has been in operation. Mrs. Lynn Linton asserts that "the number of women who cannot nurse their own children is yearly increasing in the educated and well-conditioned classes, and coincident with this special failure is the increase of uterine disease. This I have," adds Mrs. Linton, "from one of our most famous specialists." One may remark on this, in passing, that the above assertion is an interesting example of non sequitur. There are many features of social life also coincident with this higher education, but they are not by any means necessarily due to this education. Further, Miss F. P. Cobbe, in an extremely interesting paper on the "Little Health of Ladies," in the Contemporary Review, 1878, holds a view that differs widely from that of Mrs. Linton. Miss Cobbe points out that it is especially among the wealthy and well-conditioned classes that there is so much illness, but she ascribes its prevalence to causes none of which can be described as in the remotest degree connected with excessive exercise of the brain. It is further argued that to be successful in the race some women wish to run-i. e., to reach a slightly higher intellectual level than they at present occupy-they must remain a class apart; they must, in fact, be celibates. As it has been very frankly, if not very intelligently, asserted: "To justify the cost of her education a woman ought to devote herself to its use, else does it come under the head of waste; and to devote herself to its use, she ought to make herself celibate by philosophy and for the utilization of her material." She must, in short, give up all thoughts of domestic pleasures save and except those that are enjoyed by bachelors. And, it being assumed that higher education is only compatible with celibacy, and that only the better class of women will go in for it, we are told that only inferior women would be left to perpetuate the race, to the great detriment of society. Among other disabilities that are prophesied for those women who are rash enough to wish to cultivate their brains, one finds that they must discard petticoats, which hamper their movements, and so hinder them from competing effectually with men in men's occupations. "Whatever," says Dr. Richardson, "therefore, there is of elegance in the present form of female attire, that must be sacrificed to the necessities of competition with men in the work common to men;" and then he adds this highly instructive, and, one ventures to think, highly original, view of the importance of woman's dress, and which may possibly cause some women to reconsider their determination:-"The dress she wears under the régime of woman, the mother of men and women, is the sign of the destiny which holds her from the active work of men, and which affords her the opportunity for bedecking herself so as to fulfil her destiny with elegance and fascination." Surely the gospel of clothes could no further go. It is also maintained that this fulfilling of her destiny with ele. gance and fascination, or otherwise, will be seriously interfered with by leading to a modification of the present mode of dress, concerning the beauty of which opinions differ. But should woman be so ill-advised as to enter the ranks with men she will find that, just as men's occupations stamp themselves in repression of visage, in tone of voice, in carriage of body, and in size and shape of hands, so must she not hope to escape this supposed degradation of elegance and beauty entailed by these modifications. Finally-this time also an æsthetic argument, and therefore supposed to be peculiarly adapted to convince female intellects, and those who believe that there is, after all, something higher for woman to do than simply to bedeck herself for the fulfilling of her destiny with elegance and fascinationwoman is warned that, should she persist in her ill-advised course, the awful result will ensue that her forehead will become slightly larger, as a necessary consequence of the increase of brain power; and it seems that some aesthetic genius has laid it down, apparently for all time, that in woman "a large forehead is felt to derogate from beauty." The value of this æsthetic peculiarity of woman's forehead can be properly appreciated only when we learn that "the frontal regions, which correspond to the non-excitable region of the brain of the monkey, are small or rudimentary in the lower animals, and their intelligence and powers of reflective thought correspond." * And from his researches, Professor Ferrier sees reason to believe that "development of the frontal lobes is greatest in men with the highest intellectual powers, and, taking one man with another, the greatest intellectual power is characteristic of the one with the greatest frontal development." When we thus turn to science, we get small encouragement for our admiration of small foreheads-an admiration that is very analogous to the complacency with which the Chinese regard the distorted and unnatural feet of their women. The foregoing objections form a list of disabilities, social, physical, and moral, that is sufficiently appalling to minds accustomed to accept all ex cathedrâ statements as gospel, and to receive assertions, as established facts, and we know that women's minds are peculiarly susceptible to such influences. But through all the objections there run two assumptions, neither of which is warranted by anything much beyond the dictum of some more or less trustworthy authority, and a few cases of injury produced by injudi. cious and excessive study, probably conjoined with a delicate constitution. These assumptions are (1) that this higher education of women, as carried out, say, at Girton and Newnham, is inconsistent with physical health; and (2) it is implied and assumed that the physical health of the women of the present day is of an extremely satisfactory character. Before proceeding to examine these points, we may remark as rather a melancholy fact that most of the opposition to this movement comes, not from the uneducated and illiterate, but from the learned and from those who, with more knowl edge, ought to know better; particularly is it in the medical profession that the most bitter opposition is met with. The attitude of this profession towards women who have endeavored to enter medicine, in which there is a great sphere for them, has been, one regrets to say it, one of uncompromising hostility; so much so as to pretty nearly justify Miss F. P. Cobbe when she says that the wisdom of the medical profession on this subject may be thus summed up: * Ferrier, Functions of the Brain. "Women, beware!" it cries; "beware! You are on the brink of destruction. You have hitherto been engaged only in crushing your waists; now you are attempting to cultivate your minds! You have been merely dancing all night in the foul air of ball-rooms; now you are beginning to spend your mornings in study. You have been incessantly stimulating your emotions with concerts and operas, with French plays and French novels; now you are exerting your understanding to learn Greek and solve propositions in Euclid! Beware, oh beware! Science pronounces that the woman who studies—is lost!" To those who know anything of the opposition manifested by the medical profession towards this movement, such a description as the foregoing, though severe, must appear accurate. But, as was remarked, it has been too readily implied that the health of those women who are most likely to go in for this higher education is at present good-an assumption which any one on very short consideration can contradict from his own experience. Where do we find grown girls whose physical health and nervous energy are such that they would go a long walk for the sake of the physical exercise it gives them? But we do find too many girls who, at the age when the bodily condition should be most vigorous, and their nervous energy most active, find their strength and nervous energy quite exhausted by the labor required for dressing and going for a solemn walk into town, whence they return exhausted and fagged out, instead of benefited. And can we wonder at this, when we see the methods invented by fashion to so attire our women that their arms and legs are so hampered, and their bodies so compressed, that free active exercise is impossible? No wonder then that woman should find it such a trouble to dress, and that, being such a trouble, it is as often as possible avoided, until her exercise is pretty much as limited as that of the model woman in Socrates, where the good husband "advises his wife to take exercise by folding up and putting by clothes, so obtaining what she ought to have obtained by walking out." Such meagre exercise as our women take is quite inconsistent, not only with health, but with beauty. Any one who knows anything of gynæcology is aware that many feminine troubles are due solely to want of exercise, with consequent weak and defective health; and more cases come under the notice of specialists, famous or otherwise, from this defective and weak state of health of our women, than have ever come, or are ever likely to come, from the injurious effects of this higher education. So prevalent is the general weak physical condition of women that one cannot but agree with Miss Cobbe's reflection-"that the Creator should have planned a whole sex of patients, that the normal condition of the female of the human species should be to have legs which walk not, and brains which can only work on pain of disturbing the rest of the ill-adjusted machine-this is to me simply incredible." With a higher intellectual training, and the mind consequently more actively employed, one can safely say that specialists in women's diseases would lose many of their most profitable patients, many of whom come |