The "bitter herbs" (ai"!"!^, merorim') with which the Israelites were commanded to eat the Passover bread (Exod. ii, 8; Numb, ix, 11 : the same Heb. word occurs also in Lam. iii, 15, " He hath filled me with bit- terness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood") doubtless in general " included the various edible kinds of bitter plants, whether cultivated or wild, which the Israelites could with facility obtain in suflicient abun- dance to supply their number either in Egj-pt. where the first Passover was eaten, or in the deserts of the pe- ninsida of Sinai, or in Palestine. The Mishna {Pesa- chim. c. 2, § G) enumerates five kinds of bitter herbs — chazereth, hdshin, thamcah, charchabina, and maror — which it was lawful to eat either green or dried. There is great difficulty in identifying the plants which these words respectively denote, but the reader may see the subject discussed "by Bochart (Ilieroz. i, 691, ed. Eosen- mliUer) and by Carpzovius (Apparut. Hist. Crit. p. 402). According to "the testimony of Forskal, in Niebuhr's Preface to the Description de VArabie (p. xliv), the modern Jews of Arabia and Eg^-pt eat lettuce, or, if this is not at hand, bugloss, with the Paschal lamb. The Greek word jtiktoic is identified by Sprengel {flist. Bei Herb, i, 100) with the Helminthia echioides, Lin., bristly helminthia (ox-tongue), a plant belonging to the chic- ory group. The Picris of botanists is a genus closely allied to the Helminthia. Aben Esra, in Celsius {Hie- rob. ii, 227), remarks that, according to the observations of a certain learned Spaniard, the ancient Egj-ptians al- ways used to place different kinds of herbs upon the table, with mustard, and that they dipped morsels of bread into this salad. That the Jews derived this cus- tom of eating herbs with their meat from the EgA'ptians is extremely probable, for it is easy to see how, on the
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one hand, the bitter-herb salad should remind the Jews of the bitterness of their bondage (Exod. i, 14), and, on ' the other hand, how it should also Ijring to their remem- brance their merciful deliverance from it. It is curious to observe, in connection with the remarks of Aben Es- ra, the custom, for such it appears to have been, of dip- ping a morsel of bread into the dish (jb rpvjiXiov) which prevailed in our Lord's time. May not rb rpvjiXiov be the salad-dish of bitter herbs, and to xpoiofiiov the mor- sel of bread of which Aben Esra speaks ? The vierorhn may well be rjiderstood to denote various sorts of bitter plants, such particiUarly as belong to the cruciferce, as some of the bitter cresses, or to tlie chicory group of the compositce, the hawkweeds, and sow-thistles, and wild lettuces, which grow abundantly in the peninsida of Si- nai, in Palestine, and in Egypt (Decaisne, Florida Si- naica, in Annal. cles Scienc. Nut. 1834; Strand, Flo}-. Palcest. Xo. 445, etc.)" (Smith). See Bitter IIkrbs.
Herbart, Johann Friedrich, an eminent German philosopher, was born at Oldenburg IMay 4, 177G. He became professor of philosopliy in the University of Gottingen in 1805, afterwards at Konigsberg in 1809, and finally returned to Gottingen in 1833. He died there, Aug. 14, 1841. His most important works are : Kurze Darstellung eines Planes z. pMlosoph. Vorlesungen (Gott. 1804) : — De platonici systematis fundamento (Gott. 1805) :—Al.lfj.pral-tische Philosophie (Gotting. 1808):— Haupfpunkte d. Metapl/>/sik (Gott, 1808) -.—Lehrhuch z. Einleilinui in d. Philos. (Kijnigsb. 1815; 4th ed. 1841) :— Lehrhiiri, d. I'.<iirhnhHiie (Kiinigsb. 1816; 3d ed. 1834) :— Psi/c/ii)/o,/i,' ,//,>■ Wiss'enschaft (Konigsb. 1824, 2 parts) :— Ai/ff. Mttaphysik (Konigs'b. 1828, 2 parts; 2d ed. Halle, 1841) : — Gcsprdche ii. d. Base (Konigsb. 1817) : — Fnq/l: d. Philosophie (Konigsb. 1831; 2d ed. 1841) : — ,4 ?j«V tische Bekuchtunrj d. Naturrechtes u. d. Moral ((Jotting. 1836) : — Zur Lehre von der Freiheit d. menschl. Willeiis (Gott. 1836) : — Psi/chologiscke Untersuchungen (Gotting. 1839, 2 vols.). Herbart's philosophical essays and pam- phlets were published by Hartenstein (Lpz. 1841-43, 3 vols.), who also published a complete collection of his works {Sdmmtliche Werke, Lpz. 1850-52, 12 vols.).
Herbart was at first a Kantian, but afterwards, influ- enced by the study of ancient Greek philosophy, he cre- ated a philosophical system of his own, which is distin- guished by ingenuity above aU the other post-Kantian systems. "Although Herbart occasionally professes to be a follower of Kant, still he is of opinion that Kant's Criticism of Pure Reason is almost without any objec- tive value, and that its method must be entirely aban- doned if metaphysics are to be founded on a secure and permanent basis. Herbart's realistic tendency further reminds us of the monades of Leibnitz. Philosophy, according to Herbart, has not, like ordinarj' sciences, any particular set of subjects which are its province, but it consists in the manner and method in which any sub- ject wliatsoever is treated. The subjects themselves are supposed to be known, and are called by liim ' no- tions' (Begriffe), so that philosopliy is the metliodical treatment and working out of those ' notions.' The dif- ferent methods of treatment constitute the main depart- ments of philosophy. The first of them is logic, which considers the nature and clearness of notions and their combinations. But the contemplation of the world and of ourselves brings before us notions wliich cause a dis- cord in our thoughts. This circumstance renders it nec- essary for us to modify or change tliose notions accord- ing to the particular nature of each. By the process of modification or change something new is added, which Herbart calls the supplement or complement (Ergiin- zung). Now the second main department of philosophy is metaphysics, which Herbart defines to be the science of the supplementary notions. The method of discov- ering the supplementary notions which are necessary in order to render given facts which contain contradictory notions intelligible, is, according to him, the method of relations, and it is by this method alone that the other notions of the world and of ourselves can be properly