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incorporeal power, and that ordinary men eat showers of angels. The Scripture is accustomed to describe heavenly visitations under the name of angels; but these, when applied to the various characters represented by the persons whom they visited, symbolize the Divine thoughts, precepts, or laws which come with their heavenly messages to the soul. We may be permitted to sum up in words which have been used elsewhere: ‘The Logos is the Thought of God, dwelling subjectively in the infinite Mind, planted out and made ob- jective in the universe. The cosmos is a tissue of rational forces, which images the beauty, the power, the goodness of its primeval fountain. The reason of man is this same rational force entering into consciousness, and held by each in proportion to the truth and variety of his thoughts; and to follow it is the law of righteous living. Each form which we can differentiate as a distinct species, each rule of conduct which we can treat as an injunction of reason, is itself a Logos, one of those innumerable thoughts or laws into which the universal Thought may, through self-reflexion, be resolved. Thus, wherever we turn, these Words, which are really Works of God, confront us, and lift our minds to that uniting and cosmic Thought which, though comprehending them, is itself de- pendent, and tells us of that impenetrable BEING from whose inexhaustible fulness it comes, of whose perfections it is the shadow, and whose splendours, too dazzling for all but the purified intuitions of the highest souls, it at once suggests and veils’ (Drummond, Philo Judeus, ii. p. 273).
8. The higher relations of man, and the ethical principles which rested upon them.—(a) The Logos was the archetype of human reason; and this reason was the true generic man, made according to the image of God, and not yet divided into species, which arose with the ‘moulded’ man, who participated in quality, consisted of body and soul, was man or woman, and naturally mortal. We have seen that Philo believed in the pre-existence of the soul; but how he reconciled this doctrine with the biblical account of the creation of man is not apparent. The first man, having proceeded more directly from God, was the most perfect, while his descendants, who sprung from men, underwent continual degeneration. Adam himself made a wrong choice, being led astray by woman, sensation, which acted under the seduction of the serpent, pleasure. But participation in the original type of humanity was never lost. Man was the true temple of God, and none was so base as never to be visited with noble thoughts. The highest form of this visitation was prophecy, which came only to the wise and good, who in moments of ecstasy were possessed by God, and spoke nothing of their own. The knowledge of grand ideals, combined with the power of wrong choice, made man a moral and responsible being; and Philo deals so abundantly with ethical questions that it is possible to gather his unsystematic utterances into some sort of orderly arrangement.
(6) The supreme end of human life is evdacuovla, and this consists of ‘the practice of perfect virtue in a perfect life’ (Quod det. pot. ins. 17 [i. 203). But, while virtue should be followed for its own sake, it is something higher to follow it for the sake of honouring and pleasing God. He is the perfect good; and to follow Him, and find refuge with Him, is eternal life ({wh aidvos), while de- parture from Him is death (de Fuga et Invent. 15 [i. 557]). The supreme evil, then, is ¢:Aavria, otherwise described as peyadavyla, doéBeu, or
duabia. This ignorance is a forgetfulness of our indebtedness to God, to whom alone it 1s congru- ous to say ‘mine’; and ‘whoever dares to say that anything is his own shall be written down a
slave for all eternity’ (Leg. All. iii. 70 [i. 126)). The conditions of responsibility are, first, the possession of a twofold nature, inclining respec- tively to the eternal and the transient; conse- quently the power of choice between alternatives ; and, thirdly, a knowledge of the better and the worse, which is given by the conscience. It is man’s bodily constitution that renders him liable to sin; for the body, being phenomenal, is opposed to the eternal, and sin consists of a preference for the transient and partial instead of the eternal and universal. The body, accordingly, is a prison, a tomb, or a foreign lina; which impedes the reason in the pursuit of its true end. Pleasure (7504), one of the irrational passions, is the prin- ciple which brings mind and sensation together ; and it is the desire for pleasure that leads us into moral evil. “Emévula is generally used in a bad sense, as the desire ‘for absent things which are looked upon as good, but are not truly so,’ such as food and drink, wealth, glory, power. From this source all public and private wrongs have sprung. Nevertheless, Philo distinctly disapproves of asceti- cism. ‘If,’ he says, ‘you see any one not taking food and drink at the proper time, or declining the use of baths and ointments, or neglecting covering for his body, or sleeping on the ground and keeping an uncomfortable house, and then from these things counterfeiting temperance, take compassion on his error, and show him the true way of temperance’ (Quod det. pot. ins. 7 [i. 195)). If the perfect man reaches a state of dmd@ea, this is only a deliverance from the sway of the irra- tional passions through the joyous energy of love and trust. As the end of man’s probation, Philo expected the triumph of good over evil. The Israelites would be gathered together into their own land; but there is no clear recognition of a Messiah, still less of any identification of him with the Logos. The punishment of sin is a living death, and the final reward of virtue is to have the Divine Spirit of wisdom within, and to hold communion with the Unbegotten and Eternal.