Note 1 — Chapter VII · Solomonic Antijahvism.

It is tolerably certain that such fragments as those of Agur imply a literary atmosphere, a cultured philosophic constituency, and a long precedent evolution of rationalism. Such peaks are not solitary, but rise from mountain ranges. Professor Dillon, whose admirable volume merits study, finds Buddhistic influence in Agur’s fragments.1 But I cannot find in them any trace of the recluse or of the mystic; he does not appear to be even an “agnostic,” for when he says “I have worried myself about God and succeeded not,” the vein is too satirical for a mind interested in theistic speculations. He is a man of the world,—more of a Goethe than a Voltaire; he regards Jahveh as a phantasm, is well domesticated in his planet, and does not moralise on the facts of nature in the Oriental any more than in the Pharisaic way. He appears to be a true Solomonic philosopher and naturalist. I cannot agree to Professor Dillon’s omission of the “Four Cunning Ones” (Proverbs xxx. 24–28), because they are not of the same metrical form as the others, and lead “nowhither.” The lines