Parisians in the Country
PARISIANS IN THE COUNTRY BY HONORE DE BALZAC INTRODUCTION I have sometimes wondered whether it was accident or intention which made Balzac so frequently combine early and late work in the same volume. The question is certainly insoluble, and perhaps not worth solving, but it presents itself once more in the present instance. /L'Illustre Gaudissart/ is a story of 1832, the very heyday of Balzac's creative period, when even his pen could hardly keep up with the abundance of his fancy and the gathered stores of his minute observation. /La Muse du Departement/ dates ten years and more later, when, though there was plenty of both left, both sacks had been deeply dipped into.
works of supererogation, performance of more than the Law required; not
only were there important divergences in the practical rules of conduct
formulated by the various Rabbis; but there was a whole class of actions
described as 'matters given over to the heart,' delicate refinements
of conduct which the law left untouched and were a concern exclusively
of the feeling, the private judgment of the individual. The right of
private judgment was passionately insisted on in matters of conduct, as
when Rabbi Joshua refused to be guided as to his practical decisions by
the Daughter of the Voice, the supernatural utterance from on high. The
Law, he contended, is on earth, not in heaven; and man must be his own
judge in applying the Law to his own life and time. And, the Talmud adds,
God Himself announced that Rabbi Joshua was right.
Thus there was neither complete fluidity of doctrine nor complete rigidity
of conduct. There was freedom of conduct within the law, and there was
law within freedom of doctrine.
But Dr. Emil Hirsch puts the case fairly when he says: 'In the
same sense as Christianity or Islam, Judaism cannot be credited with
Articles of Faith. Many attempts have indeed been made at systematising
and reducing to a fixed phraseology and sequence the contents of the
Jewish religion. But these have always lacked the one essential element:
authoritative sanction on the part of a supreme ecclesiastical body'
(_Jewish Encyclopedia_, ii. 148).
Since the epoch of the Great Sanhedrin, there has been no central
PARISIANS IN THE COUNTRY BY HONORE DE BALZAC INTRODUCTION I have sometimes wondered whether it was accident or intention which made Balzac so frequently combine early and late work in the same volume. The question is certainly insoluble, and perhaps not worth solving, but it presents itself once more in the present instance. /L'Illustre Gaudissart/ is a story of 1832, the very heyday of Balzac's creative period, when even his pen could hardly keep up with the abundance of his fancy and the gathered stores of his minute observation. /La Muse du Departement/ dates ten years and more later, when, though there was plenty of both left, both sacks had been deeply dipped into.