Ecclesiastes 1:4

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh The sentence loses in strength by the words inserted in italics. Better, generation passeth and generation cometh. This is, as it were, the first note of vanity. Man, in idea the lord of the earth, is but as a stranger tarrying for a day. As in the touching parable of the Saxon chief, he comes from the darkness as into the light of a festive hall, and then passes into the darkness once again (Bede, Eccl. Hist. ii. c. 14), but the earth which is in idea subject to him boasts a permanence which he cannot claim. In the Hebrew word which answers to "for ever" we have, as elsewhere, an undefined rather than an absolutely infinite duration.

Parallelisms of thought present themselves in Sir 14:19; Job 10:21; Psalms 39:13, and, we may add, in Homer, Il.vi. 146,

οἴη περ φύλλων γενεή, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

φύλλα τὰ μέν τʼ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θʼ ὓλη

τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἒαρος δʼ ἐπιγίγνεται ὣρη•

ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἡ μὲν φύει, ἡ δʼ ἀπολήγει.

"As are the leaves, so is the race of men;

Some the wind scatters on the ground, and some

The fruitful forest, when the springtide comes,

Puts forth; so note we also with mankind;

One comes to life, another falls away."

It is significant that these lines were ever in the mouth of Pyrrho, the founder of the Greek school of Sceptics (Diog. Laert. ix. 11. 6).