Perfect Being, and that of a world which was full of imperfections as being the work of created beings, came, as we shall see, to be of importance in some phases of Christian thought.

It was inevitable, in the syncretism which results when an age of philosophical reflection succeeds an age of philosophical origination, that these two great drifts of thought should tend in some points to approach each other. The elements in them which were most readily fused together were the theories of the processes by which the actual world came into being, and of the nature of the forces which lay behind those processes. In Stoicism, there was the theory of the one Law or Logos expressing itself in an infinite variety of material forms in Platonism, there was the theory of the one God, shaping matter according to an infinite variety of patterns. In the one, the processes of nature were the operations of active forces, containing in themselves the law of the forms in which they exhibit themselves, self-developing seeds, each of them a portion of the one Logos which runs through the whole.1 In the other, they were the operations of the infinitely various and eternally active energy of God, moving always in the direction of His thoughts, so that those thoughts

1 λóyoι σTTEρμаTIKоí, frequently in Stoical writings, e.g. in the definition of the Tuρ TeXVIKÒV, which is the base of all things, as given in the Placita of Aetius, reproduced by Plutarch, Eusebius, and Stobæus, Diels, p. 306, εμπεριειληφὸς πάντας τοὺς σπερματικοὺς λόγους καθ ̓ οὓς ἕκαστα καθ' εἱμαρμένην γίνεται. The best account of this important element in later Stoicism is in Heinze, die Lehre vom Logos in der griechischen Philosophie, 1872, pp. 110 sqq.

might themselves be conceived as the causes of the operations.1 In both the one theory and the other, the processes were sometimes regarded in their apparent multiplicity, and sometimes in their underlying unity: and in both also the unity was expressed sometimes.by the impersonal term Logos, and sometimes by the personal term God.

But while the monism of the Stoics, by laying stress upon the antithesis between the two phases of the one substance, was tending to dualism, the dualism of the Platonists, by laying stress upon the distinction between the creative energy of God and the form in the mind of God which His energy embodied in the material universe, was tending to introduce a third factor into the conception of creation. It became common to speak, not of two principles, but of three-God, Matter, and the Form, or Pattern.2 Hence came a new fusion of conceptions. The Platonic Forms in the mind of God, conceived, as they sometimes were, as causes operating outside Him,

1 Hence the definition which Aetius gives: ἰδέα ἐστὶν οὐσία ἀσώματος, αὐτὴ μὲν ὑφεστῶσα καθ ̓ αὑτὴν εἰκονίζουσα δὲ τὰς ἀμόρφους ὕλας καὶ αἰτία γινομένη τῆς τούτων δείξεως, ap. Plut. de plac. philos. 1. 10; Euseb. præp. evang. 15. 45; with additions and differences in Stob. Ecl. 1. 12 (Diels, p. 308).

2 The three apxaí are expressed by varying but identical terms: God, Matter, and the Form (idea), or the By Whom, From What, In view of What (ὑφ' οὗ, ἐξ οὗ, πρὸς ὅ), in the Placita of Aetius, 1. 3. 21, ap. Plut. de placit. phil. 1. 3, Stob. Ecl. 1. 10 (Diels, p. 288), and in Timæus Locrus, de an. mundi 2 (Mullach FPG 2. 38): God, Matter, and the Pattern (apádelyμa), Hippol. Philosoph. 1. 19, Herm. Irris. Gent. Phil. 11: the Active (Tò TOLOûv), Matter, and the Pattern, Alexand. Aphrod. ap. Simplic. in phys. f. 6 (Diels, p. 485), where Simplicius contrasts this with Plato's own strict dualism.

were more or less identified with the Stoical Logoi, and, being viewed as the manifold expressions of a single Logos, were expressed by a singular rather than a plural term, the Logos rather than the Logoi of God.

It is at this point that the writings of Philo become of special importance. They gather together, without fusing into a symmetrical system, the two dominant theories of the past, and they contain the seeds of nearly all that afterwards grew up on Christian soil. It is possible that those writings cover a much larger period of time than is commonly supposed, and that if we could find a key to their chronological arrangement, we should find in them a perfect bridge from philosophical Judaism to Christian theology. And even without such a key we are able to see in them a large representation of the processes of thought that were going on, and can better understand by the analogies which they offer both the tentative theories and those that ultimately became dominant in the sphere of Christianity. It is consequently desirable to give a brief account of the view which they present.

The ultimate cause of the world is to be found in the nature of God. As in Plato, though perhaps in a different sense, God is regarded as good. By His goodness He was impelled to make the world: He was able to make it by virtue of His power. "If any one wished to search out the reason why the universe was made, I think that he would not be far from the mark if he were to say, what, in fact, one of the ancients said, that the Father and Maker is good, and that being good He did not grudge the best kind of nature to matter (ovoia)

....

which of itself had nothing excellent, though it was capable of becoming all things." And again: "My soul once told me a more serious story (than that of the Greek mythology), when seized, as it often was, with a divine ecstasy... It told me that in the one really existing God there are two chief and primary faculties, Goodness and Power, and that by Goodness He begat the universe, and by Power He governs it."2 God is thus the Creator, the Fashioner and Maker of the world, its Builder and Artificer. But when the conception of His relation to the world is more precisely examined, it is found to be based upon a recognition of a sharp distinction between the world of thought and that of sense; and to be monistic in regard to the one, dualistic in regard to the other. God is mind. From Him, as from a fountain, proceed all forms of mind and reason. Reason, whether unconscious in the form of natural law, or conscious in the form of human thought, is like a river that

1 De mundi opif. 5 (i. 5): cf. Plat. Tim. p. 30 (of God), dyalòs v ἀγαθῷ δὲ οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδενὸς οὐδέποτε ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος· τούτου δ' ἐκτὸς ὢν πάντα ὁτιμάλιστα ἐβουλήθη γενέσθαι παραπλήσια αὑτῷ.

3 De cherub. 9 (i. 144): cf. ib. 35 (i. 162).

2 The most frequent word is dŋpovpyós, but several others are used, e.g. πλάστης, de confus. ling. 38 (i. 434); τεχνίτης, ibid. ; κοσμοπλάστ της, de plant Noe, 1 (i. 329); κοσμοποιός, ibid. 31 (i. 348), οὐ τεχνίτης μóvov ảλλà κаì ñаτỳρ τŵν yiyvoμévwv, Leg. alleg. 1. 8 (i. 47). The distinctions which became important in later controversies do not appear in the writings which are probably Philo's own, but are found in those which probably belong to his school: the most explicit recognition of them is de somn. 1. 13 (i. 632), o Oeds тà Távτα γεννήσας οὐ μόνον εἰς τὸ ἐμφανὲς ἤγαγεν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἃ πρότερον οὐκ ἦν ἐποίησεν, οὐ δημιουργὸς μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ κτίστης αὐτὸς ὤν: cf. also de monarch. 3 (ii. 216), θεὸς εἰς ἐστι καὶ κτίστης καὶ ποιητὴς τῶν ὅλων.

flows forth from Him and fills the universe.1

In man the two worlds meet. The body is fashioned by the Artificer from the dust of the earth: "The soul came from nothing that is created, but from the Father and Leader of all things. For what He breathed into Adam was nothing else than a divine breath, a colony from that blissful and happy nature, placed here below for the benefit of our race; so that granting man to be mortal in respect of his visible part, yet in respect of that which is invisible he is the heir of immortality." And again: "The mind is an offshoot from the divine and happy soul (of God), an offshoot not separated from Him, for nothing divine is cut off and disjoined, but only extended." And again, in expounding the words, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of life" (Jeremiah ii. 13), he says: "Only God is the cause of soul and life, especially of rational soul and reasonable life; but He Himself is more than life, being the ever-flowing fountain of life."4

This is monistic. But the theory of the origin of the sensible world is dualistic. The matter upon which He acted was outside Him. "It was in itself without order, without quality, without soul, full of difference, disproportion, and discord: it received a change and transformation into what was opposite and best, order, quality, animation, identity, proportion, harmony, all that is

1 De somn. 2. 37 (i. 691).

De mundi opif. 46 (i. 32): cf. ib. 51 (i. 35): quod deus immut. 10 (i. 279), and elsewhere.

3 Quod det. pot. ins. 24 (i. 208, 209).

De profug. 36 (i. 575).