xii, 1; comp. Gataker on iv, 23). Thus the stoicism of M. Aurelius gives many of the moral precepts of the Gospel (Gataker, p. xviii), but without their founda- tion, which can find no place in his system. It is im- possible to read his reflections without emotion, but they have no creative energy. They are the last strain of a dying creed, and in themselves have no special af- finity to the new faith. Christianity necessarily in- cludes whatever is noblest in them, but they affect to supply the place of Christianity, and do not lead to it. The real elements of greatness in M. Aurelius are many, and truly Roman; but the study of his Meditations by the side of the New Test, can leave little doubt that he coidd not have helped to give a national standing-place to a catholic Church.
The history of ancient philosophy in its religious as- pect has been strangely neglected. Nothing, so far as we are aware, has been written on the pre-Christian sera answering to the clear and elegant essay of Matter on post -Christian philosophy (Ilistoire de la Philosophic dans ses rapports avec la Religion depuis V'erc Chreti- cnne, Paris, 1854). There are useful hints in Carove's Yorhalle des Christenthums (Jena, 1851), and Acker- mann's Das Christliche in Plato (Hamb. 1835). The treatise of Denis, Histoire des Theories et des I dees mo- rales dans VAntiquite (Paris, 1856), is limited in range and hardly satisfactory. Dollinger's Yorhalle zur Gesck. d. Christenthums (Kegensb. 1857; transl. Lond. 1862) is comprehensive, but covers too large a field. The brief surveys in De Pressense's Hist, des Trois Premiers Si'ecles deVEylise Chretienne (Paris, 1858; transl. Edinb. 1862), and in Cocker, Christianity and Greek Philosojihy (N. Y. 1870), are much more vigorous, and on the whole just. But no one seems to have apprehended the real char- acter and growth of Greek philosophy so well as Zeller (though with no special attention to its relations to re- ligion) in his history (Die Philosophic der Griechen, 2d ed. Tub. 1856), which for subtlety and completeness is unrivalled. See (in addition to works named in the ad- joining articles) Brandis, Handb. d.yr.-rom. Philosojihie (Berl. 1835 sq.) ; Maury, Hist, de la Religion de la. Grece (Paris, 1857 sq., 3 vols.); Butler, Hist, of Anc. Philos. (Lond. 1866, 2 vols.).
II. Connection of Greek with Hebrew Philosophy. — The literature of Greece and Juda?a came in contact at Alexandria; and the first known attempt to accom- plish their fusion is that ascribed to the Jewish Peri- patetic Aristobulus, in the reign of Ptolemy Philometor (B.C. 180-146) ; but the principal extant specimens are to be found in the writings of the Jewish Platonist Philo, the date of whose birth may be placed about B.C. 20. (Aristobulus is said to have been a Peripatetic; but of his exact relations to this philosophy nothing is known. From the few fragments which remain of his writings, he seems to have anticipated Philo in the em- ployment of an allegorical interpretation of Scripture. His name, however, is more known in connection with forgeries of the Greek poets in support of his theory that the wisdom of the Greeks was borrowed from Moses. See Valckenser, Diatribe de A ristobvlo, Lugd. Bat. 1806, reprinted in Gaisford's edition of Eusebii Pr&p. Evang. ; Diihne, ii, 73 ; Vacherot, Histoiie de VEcole cTA lexandrie, i, HO.) Philo's system may be de- scribed as the result of a contact between the Hellenic theory of the absolute and the Jewish belief in God as represented in the Old Test. (See Dorner, Person of Christ, vol. i, note A [p. 330, Eng. transl.]. For some of the details of this contact, see Diihne, i, 31 sq.) In his religion Philo was a Jew, with all a Jew's reverence for the oracles of God committed to the charge of his peo- ple; but his philosophical studies attached themselves to those doctrines of the Platonic philosophy which, while dealing with the same great question, approached it from an opposite point of view. (For Philo's testi- mony to the divine authority of the Scriptures, see Vii. Mos. lib. iii, c. 23 [p. 163, Mangey] ; Quis rer. div. hoer. c. 52, 53, p. 510, 511. Other passages to the same effect
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132
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are cited by Gfrorer, i, 54. l'liilo even maintains the divine inspiration of the Septuaginl version, Vit. Mos. ii, c. 6, 7, p. 139, 1 K). > The result in his writings was an attempted combination of the two— the Greek philos- ophy supplying the fundamental idea, while the Jewish Scriptures, through the Septuaginl translation, contrib- uted, by means of an extravagant licfii.se of allegorical interpretation, much of the language and illustration of the system, besides imparting to ii the apparent sanc- tion of a di\ ine authority. The leading idea of Philo's teaching is the expansion of thai thought of Plato's which forms the connecting link between the philoso- phy of Greece and the pantheism <>f the East — that thought which represents the supreme principle of things as absolutely cue and simple, beyond personality ami beyond definite existence, and as Mich immutable and incapable of relation to temporal things. (Comp. Plato, Rep.vi, 509; ii, 381. Gfrdrer,i, 134, and Franck, Diet. des Sciences Philosophiques, art. Philon, regard this l'eai ore ol Philo's theology as of oriental origin. But his Greek studies might suggest the same idea, and much of his language seems to point to tins origin. See