Sometimes we
congratulate them for having disappeared from history in good
season; it would be just as reasonable, or, rather, just as
unreasonable, to be grateful to them for having come at exactly
the right juncture of affairs. The great man, in fact, is the
man of the moment; he comes neither too soon, which spares him
from fumbling over beginnings and so clogging his own footsteps,
nor too late, which prevents him from imitating a model and so
impeding the development of his personality. He is neither a
precursor nor an epigone, neither a forerunner nor a late-comer.
He neither breaks the ground nor gleans the harvest: he is the
sower who casts the seed upon a field ready to receive it and
make it grow.
It is, therefore, of some avail for us to devote several pages to
the history of the Jews of Northern France in the eleventh
century, especially in regard to their intellectual state and
more especially in regard to their rabbinical culture. If
another reason were needed to justify this preamble, I might
invoke a principle long ago formulated and put to the test by
criticism, namely, that environment is an essential factor in the
make-up of a writer, and an intellectual work is always
determined, conditioned by existing circumstances. The principle
applies to Rashi, of whom one may say, of whom in fact Zunz has
said, he is the representative
par excellence of his time
and of his circle.
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