[273] by which he means that man should crush his physical desires and repress his feelings. Not that the good life seems to him to imply absence of pleasure. On the contrary, it is filled with the purest of joy, for when man rises to the love of God "in calm of mind, all passion spent," then and then alone has he tasted true joyousness. The symbol of this bliss is Isaac
, the laughter of the soul.
It was noticed in the second chapter that Philo modified his ethical ideas during his life. In the earlier period he insists more strongly on the need of ascetic self-denial, and has almost a horror of the world. Maturer experience, however, taught him that man is made for this world, and that a wise use of its goods was a surer path to happiness and to [pg.187] God than flight from all temptations. In his later writings, therefore, he exhibits a striking moderation. He reproaches the ascetics for their "savage enthusiasm,"[274] probably hinting at the extreme sects of the Essenes and the Therapeutæ. "Those who follow a gentler wisdom seek after God, but at the same time do not despise human things."
"Truth will properly blame those who without discrimination shun all concern with the life of the State, and say that they despise the acquisition of good repute and pleasure. They are only making grand pretensions, and they do not really despise these things. They go about in torn raiment and with solemn visage, and live the life of penury and hardship as a bait, to make people believe that they are lovers of good conduct, temperance, and self-control."[275]
Philo's aphorism, which follows, "Be drunk in a sober manner," is characteristic. The Stoic extreme of passionlessness is almost as false as the Epicurean hedonism, and the mean between them is the ideal Jewish life, in which godliness and humanity are blended.
We have now examined the main divisions of Philo's philosophy, and we see that his metaphysics, cosmology, theory of knowledge, and ethics are all religious in tone, and all determined in their main lines by his Jewish outlook. His Hebraism is a seal which stamps all that enters his mind from Greek [pg.188] sources, and the Bible, spiritually interpreted, is the canon of all his wisdom.
There remains one minor aspect of his work which must be briefly examined, because it has become closely associated with his name. This is his number-symbolism, by which he ascribes important powers to certain numbers, so that they are regarded as holy themselves and sanctifying that to which they are attached. This feature of his thought is commonly ascribed to Pythagorean influence, which was strong at Alexandria, and, indeed, throughout the world, at this era. The exact details of the holiness of four, seven, ten, fifty, etc., Philo may have borrowed from neo-Pythagorean sources, but the general tendency was the natural result of his environment and his stage of thought. It was a feature of the recurring childishness of ideas and the renascence of wonder at common things which is apparent on many hands. To have denied the powers of numbers would have seemed as absurd and eccentric then as to deny the powers of electricity to-day. And in all ages people have been found to regard numbers mystically as a link between God and earth, and a means of solving all physical and metaphysical problems. The Hebrew intellect, primitive as it was, tended particularly to the reverence of the numerical powers. Witness the Bible itself, which emphasizes certain numbers; and witness also the fifth chapter of the Pirke Abot, with its lists ranged under four, seven, and ten, which is only typical of the rabbinical attitude. Philo is not original in his views [pg.189] concerning numbers, not above nor below the loose thinking of his age. He accepts unquestioningly the potency of seven, because of its marvellous mathematical properties, ratios, etc., its geometrical efficacy, and because of the seven periods of life from infancy to old age, of the seven parts of the body, the seven motions, the seven strings of the lyre, the seven vowels, and the very name, which is connected with worship
