(6) We have already seen that the cosmos pre- sented a picture of rational forms or ideas; and, as these were combined in one harmonious whole, they constituted one cosmic thought. This thought was the highest genus, under which the multitu- dinous ideas took rank as species; or, more strictly, God, as pure Being, was the most generic, and His reason or thought was second. The Logos, there- fore, regarded as a Divine power, was the unitary principle of all beneath it. It was by virtue of His reason that God was both ruler and good ; or, in other words, creation and providence were both expressions of reason. If so, a vonrds kdcpos must have existed in the mind of God prior to the visible world; and, as it was the sum of the Divine thoughts, it was the Logos of God. ‘The intelligible cosmos,’ says. Philo, ‘is nothing else than God’s Logos, when he is already engaged in making a cosmos; for neither is the intelligible city anything else than the reflexion (Aoyiouds) of the architect when he is already intending to create the city’ (de Mundi Op. 6 [i. 5]). From this point of view the Logos is the supreme archetypal idea (iééa r&v ldewv), which by its im- press, as of a seal, on matter constitutes the visible universe. Matter, however, was inherently incap- able of retaining what was once impressed upon it; and hence its ideal forms were forces or powers constantly present and active, and might be re- garded as a law, the eternal and pervasive law of ‘right reason,’ which, stretching from centre to circumference, was a bond of the universe that could not be broken. The same supreme Logos appeared in man as the moral law, enjoining what was right and forbidding what was wrong. Thus the Logos, the intelligible cosmos, became manifest in the universe, where it dwelt as an ‘intelligent and rational nature,’ ministering as a high priest in the cosmic temple of God.
(c) It is well known that the human logos was divided into évéudé@eros and mpopopixds, and that these terms were, in the later theology, extended to the Logos of God. Now Philo, while familiar with this distinction in the case of man, never applies to God the technical language by which it was described. Hence it is sometimes main- tained that the distinction in the Divine Logos was absent from his thought. But the conception of a twofold Logos is involved in the account which we have already given, and it is quite explicitly recognized by Philo. The principal passage is in the Vita Mosis, iii. 13 [ii. 154], where it is said that the ‘Logos is double both in the universe and in the nature of man,’ and the former is divided into that which relates to immaterial ideas, and that which relates to the visible objects of the perceptible cosmos. Nevertheless, the analogy between man and God was incomplete; for God had no organs of speech, and His word was seen in His works, and not heard by the ears (see, especially, de Migrat. Abr. 9[i. 443 f.]). Philo may therefore have shrunk from adopting the usual terms, as one of them suggested anthropomorphic ideas. ;
(d) The Logos, as the sum and unity of the world of ideas, was identical with the Divine reason; and this reason was not an essence ex- traneous to God, by sharing in which God became rational, but was a mode of the Divine essence, and in no way broke the solitude of God which
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existed prior to creation. God, however, was more than reason (kpelccwy 4} raca oyKh ptors, Fragments, ii. 625); and therefore it was possible to apprehend the Divine reason, though none could reach God in His essence. Since thought may be regarded as a product of the mind, the Logos, as the cosmic thought, might be conceived as produced by God, and in this aspect is spoken of under the figure of a son, rpecBiraros or mpwrd- yovos vids. The epithet implies that there were other and younger sons; and this is agreeable to Philo’s view of God as 6 marhp rév é\wy or Tar dvrwy. As the son of God, the firstborn arche- typal idea, which by its impress has converted formless matter into a cosmos, it is God’s image, in accordance with which the rational soul in man was created. Or, in another figure, it is the shadow of God, disclosing by its incidence upon matter the rational form of which the substance is invisible.
(e) It is now apparent in what sense the Logos was conceived as mediator between God and matter. It was not a personal demiurgus, creat- ing, under orders, a universe which God Himself would not touch, but rather the effectual Divine Thought, through which God made His own work (76 idvoy Epyov, Quis rer. div. her. 42 [i. 502]), im- pressing it, like a seal, upon matter. As the hidden Reason of God, it is eternal 3 as the ob- jective Thought of God, impressed upon matter, it has come into existence. As essentially Divine, it might be spoken of, but only imperfectly (é cara- xXpHoer), as God (de Somn. i. 39 [i. 655]); and once it is described as 6 devrepos beds (Fragments, ii. 625). This we can understand, if we bear in mind that matter was not regarded as simply put into shape, and then left to itself, but its cosmic form was the living presence of Divine thought, the sum of all that man could truly apprehend of God, though he could rise to the knowledge that Reason was not exhaustive of Being, but transcendent beyond it was the eternal Cause, whose essence was un- knowable.