Very different was the character of the ancient Hebrews, who, in science as well as in art, can sustain no comparison with those other nations we have spoken of, and to whom we must apply a very different criterion of excellence. The moral eminence of this people, or the part allotted to it in high historical destiny, lies rather in the sphere of will, and in a well-regulated conduct of the will. Moses himself was undoubtedly, as it is said of him, "versed in all the science of the Egyptians;" for he had received a completely Egyptian education, which, by the care of an Egyptian princess, was of the highest and politest kind, and consequently, as the customs of the country imply, extremely scientific. Even his name according to the credible testimony of several ancient writers, was originally Egyptian, and afterwards hebraized; for _Moyses_,[50] as he is called in the Greek version of the Seventy, signifies in Egyptian, _one saved out of the water_. But the Hebrew people were far from possessing that Egyptian science of which Moses was so great a master; on the contrary, the Jewish legislator seemed to consider the greater part of that foreign science, in which he himself was so well versed, as of little service to his object; and in many instances sought to withhold this knowledge from his nation. Many of the Mosaic precepts indeed, especially such as have a reference to external life, to subsistence, diet and health, and which are in part at least founded on reasons of climate, are entirely conformable to Egyptian usages, and are found to have been practised among that people; for these ancient law-givers and founders of Asiatic states did not scruple to give even medical precepts in their codes of moral legislation, that embraced the minutest circumstances of life. But to these precepts and usages the Hebrew legislator has imparted in general a higher import and a religious consecration. We must not suppose, however, that he has taken all his laws from this source, or make this a matter of reproach to the Jewish law-giver, as many critics of our own times have done; for, to minds enslaved by the narrow spirit of the age, difficult, indeed, is it to transport themselves into that remote antiquity. It would be a great error, also, to suppose that all the science which Moses had acquired by his Egyptian education, he wished to conceal from his nation, and reserve for the secret use of himself and a few confidential friends. It is evident, if we regard the subject only in an historical point of view, that a higher and better element, completely foreign to the science of Egypt, animated and pervaded all the views and conduct of this great man, whether we consider him as the founder and law-giver of the Hebrew state, or as the guide and instructor of the Hebrew people. In the forty years' sojourn of Moses in the Arabian desert with Jethro, one of whose seven daughters he married, and who has rightly been accounted an Emir, or petty pastoral prince of Arabia, this higher principle silently grew up and expanded in the breast of this exalted man, until it at last burst forth in all the majesty of divine power. All that appeared to Moses truly sound and excellent in Egyptian customs and science, or serviceable to his purpose, he adopted and used with choice and circumspection. But all that was incompatible with his designs, and which he knew to be corrupt, he strenuously rejected, or he gave to it a totally different application, and established a higher principle in its room.