[Philistines], a people, for long of uncertain origin, but now generally believed to have been originally emigrants from Crete, who settled in the plain, some 40 m. long by 15 broad, extending along the coast of Palestine from Joppa on the N. to the desert on the S., and whose chief cities were Ashdod, Askelon, Ekron, Gaza, and Gath; they were a trading and agricultural people, were again and again a thorn in the side of the Israelites, but gradually tamed into submission, so as to be virtually extinct in the days of Christ; their chief god was [Dagon] (q. v.).
[Phillip, John], painter, born in Aberdeen; his early pictures illustrate Scottish subjects, his latest and best illustrate life in Spain, whither he had gone in 1851 for his health (1817-1867).
[Phillips, Wendell], slavery abolitionist and emancipationist generally, born at Boston, U.S., and bred to the bar; was Garrison's aide-de-camp in the cause, and chief after his death (1811-1884).
[Philo Judæus] (i. e. Philo the Jew), philosopher of the 1st century, born in Alexandria; studied the Greek philosophy, and found in it, particularly the teaching of Plato, the rationalist explanation of the religion of Moses, which he regarded as the revelation to which philosophy was but the key; he was a man of great learning and great influence among his people, and was in his old age one of an embassy sent by the Jews of Alexandria in A.D. 40 to Rome to protest against the imperial edict requiring the payment of divine honours to the emperor; he identified the Logos of the Platonists with the Word in the New Testament.
[Philocretes], a famous archer, who had been the friend and armour-bearer of Hercules who instructed him in the use of the bow, and also bequeathed his bow with the poisoned arrows to him after his death; he accompanied the Greeks to the siege of Troy, but one of the arrows fell on his foot, causing a wound the stench of which was intolerable, so that he was left behind at Lemnos, where he remained in misery 10 years, till an oracle declared that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Hercules; he was accordingly sent for, and being healed of his wound by Æsculapius, assisted at the capture of the city.
[Philomela], daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, and sister of Progne; she was the victim of an outrage committed by her brother-in-law Tereus, who cut out her tongue to prevent her exposing him, and kept her in close confinement; here she found means of communicating with her sister, when the two, to avenge the wrong, made away with Itys, Tereus' son, and served him up to his father at a banquet; the fury of Tereus on the discovery knew no bounds, but they escaped his vengeance, Philomela by being changed into a nightingale and Progne into a swallow.
[Philopoemon], the head of the Achæcan League, born at Megalopolis, and the last of the Greek heroes; fought hard to achieve the independence of Greece, but having to struggle against heavy odds, was overpowered; rose from a sick-bed to suppress a revolt, was taken prisoner, thrown into a dungeon, and forced to drink poison (252-183 B.C.).
[Philosophe], name for a philosopher of the school of 18th century Enlightenment, represented by the [Encyclopedists] (q. v.) of France; the class have been characterised by the delight they took in outraging the religious sentiment. See [Aufklärung] and [Illumination, The].
[Philosopher's Stone] was, with the Elixir of Life, the object of the search of the mediæval alchemists. Their theory regarded gold as the most perfect metal, all others being removed from it by various stages of imperfection, and they sought an amalgam of pure sulphur and pure mercury, which, being more perfect still than gold, would transmute the baser metals into the nobler.
[Philosophism, French], a philosophy such as the philosophers of France gave instances of, founded on the notion and cultivated in the belief that scientific knowledge is the sovereign remedy for the ills of life, summed up in two articles—first, that "a lie cannot be believed"; and second, that "in spiritual supersensual matters no belief is possible," her boast being that "she had destroyed religion by extinguishing the abomination" (l'Infame).