Chapter 10, The Story of a Working Hypothesis, part 2

Therefore Jacob was not to be called “the Supplanter” any more: his new name was to be Isra¨l. Jacob's descendants are called Hebrews, and also “thee people of Isra¨l.” Isra¨l was the new name which Jacob got when he turnedee from cheating to a better way of getting on in life. What was that better way? That is our x, our first unknown. What does the word Isra¨l mean? That is our y, our second unknown. I may as well tell youe at once that, so far as I am concerned, y remains unknown. I want you to take notice that I do not know what the word Isra¨l means. But some twenty yearse ago my imagination supplied me with a working hypothesis:–Suppose Israele meant rhythm. Now if I had gone telling people that Israel means rhythm, I should have been contradicted and laughed at and told that I had no proof of what I said and was talking of what I knew nothing about; and whoever said so would have been perfectly right. I should have been cheating myself and getting into bad slipshod habits. What I did was to post up inside my brain as a working hypothesis: “Suppose Isra¨l means rhythm, what would be the consequence of that hypothesis?” Then I read through old books of the Hebrews, putting in my mind the word “rhythm” wherever I found the word “Israel,” and “the people of rhythm” instead of “the people of Israel.” In the stories that are told about Jacob and his grandfather Abraham the angels are represented as telling the two men that if they would obey the angels, not only they themselves would be blessed, but all their descendants would be blessed too, and be made, at last, the means of conferring a great blessing on all the world; Moses warned them that, if they did not obey their own special angels, some special trouble would come to them. My imagination suggested to me that perhaps getting into the swing of rhythmic beats is good for all people, but more good for the people of Israele than for anybody else; and that wandering off into irregular un-rhythmic freaks is more bad for the people of Isra¨l than for anybody else.