Page:Job and Solomon (1887).djvu/239

 which claimed to give the secret of history, and which even afterwards satisfied some wise men (e.g. Sirach)—the theory that the good are rewarded and the bad punished in this world—is not borne out by Koheleth's experience,—

There is (many) a righteous man who perishes in spite of his righteousness, and there is (many) an ungodly man who lives long in spite of his wickedness (vii. 15; contrast the interpolated passage viii. 12, 13).

But though Koheleth, like Job, despairs of essential wisdom, he 'turns' with hope to the wide field of wisdom—or, as he calls it, 'wisdom and reasoning,' i.e. moral inquiries pursued on the inductive method. And what is the result of his inquiry? He gives it with much deliberateness, stating that he (viz. 'the Koheleth,' see on xii. 8) has put one fact to another in order to form a conclusion (ver. 27) and it is that women-*tempters are more pernicious than Death (man's great enemy personified, as so often). Or, putting it in other words, which I am forced to paraphrase to bring out their meaning—words to which the well-known poem of Simonides is chivalry itself—'A few rare specimens of uncorrupted human nature I have found, so rare that one may reckon them as one among a thousand; but not one of these truly human creatures was a woman.' The latter statement is the stronger, and shows that our author agrees with Ecclus. xxv. 19, that 'all wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.' And so much in earnest is he, that he even tries a third mode of expressing his conclusion. Carefully limiting himself he says, 'Lo! this only have I found; that God made mankind upright, but they have sought out many contrivances' (ver. 29); that is, men and women are both born good, but are too soon sophisticated by civilisation (and the leaders in this downward process, we may infer from the context, are the women). Koheleth scarcely means to imply that civilisation is bad in