Clifford Herschel Moore

“ Philo sets forth the doctrine most plainly. According to him God is so far above all mortal things that he must be defined in a negative way. All that we can say of him is that he is pure being, incorporeal, invisible, without qualities, above all virtue, and above all knowledge. We therefore cannot say that God is good or beautiful, because he is above all beauty and goodness; he is eternal, unchanging, existing in and for himself alone. His perfection is beyond our power to comprehend; our intellect cannot grasp his nature. All that man can know or say of God is that God is. ”

“ Lo, I am here, Lucius, moved by thy prayers, I, the parent of the universe, mistress of the elements, the primal offspring of the ages, greatest of divinities, queen of the dead, first among the celestials, the single form of gods and goddesses; I, who by my word rule the bright heights of heaven, the healthful breezes of the sea, the gloomy silent shades below. To my divinity, one in itself, the entire world does reverence under many forms, with varied rites, and manifold names. ”

“ There in the world of shadows beneath the earth or far out by the stream of Oceanus the shades, pale images of the men who were, exist; they do not live. The pathetic plaints of the shades that come up to Odysseus in the eleventh book of the Odyssey show how hopeless is their lot. Though Orion pursue the wild beasts over the cheerless plains of asphodel and Minos hold his golden staff and sit in judgment over the dead, yet all is insubstantial and far less than life. The often quoted words of Achilles’ shade sum up the whole matter: “Speak not to me of death, glorious Odysseus. ”

“ Furthermore, as has been frequently pointed out, the last centuries before our era had been marked by a feeling on the part of many of a separation from God and by a longing in some way to bridge the gulf between the human and the divine, to secure a revelation from heaven, and to attain to direct vision and knowledge of God. As the satisfactions of life, which the earlier, freer centuries had given, grew less, in weariness of spirit, conscious of his own weakness and lack of power to secure his soul’s freedom and happiness, man turned for help from outside himself. ”

“ Thee the gods of heaven above adore, the gods of the world below obey; thou spinnest the sphere of heaven, thou lightest the sun, guidest the universe, and tramplest Tartarus beneath thy feet. To thee the stars make answer, the seasons return, the divinities show their joy, the elements do their service. At thy nod the breezes blow, the clouds send their nourishing rains, seeds swell, and buds increase. Before thy majesty the birds who traverse the heavens are in awe, the beasts that roam the mountains, the serpents that lurk beneath the ground, the monsters that swim the deep. ”

“ No one who reads the prayer of praise to Isis which Lucius offered before leaving Corinth for Rome, can mistake its sincerity: “O thou holy and eternal protectress of the human race, thou who art ever kind to care for mortals and who showest unceasingly the sweet affection of a mother for the misfortunes of wretched men, neither day nor any night, nor even the slightest moment of time passes without thy blessings; thou carest for men on land and sea, thou drivest from them the storms of life and ever extendest a saving hand, wherewith thou unravellest even the inextricable web of Fate ”

“ In other passages the poet seems to feel as if language were unequal to the task of describing adequately the majesty and power of this supreme god. In his mind Zeus surpasses the other gods so much that his will represents the whole of the divine laws; to him man inevitably turns in doubt and perplexity. As the chorus say in the Agamemnon:
Zeus—whate’er ’Zeus’ expresseth of His essence— If the name please him on the lips of prayer, With his name on my lips I seek his presence, Knowing none else I may with him compare. ”

“ At the beginning of the second century of our era the genial Plutarch first stated a philosophy of a universal syncretistic religion: “Not different gods among different peoples—gods of Barbarians, of Greeks, of the South, or of the North; but even as sun and moon, heaven and earth and sea are common to all, yet have different names among different peoples, so there is one Intelligence which rules in the world, one Providence which directs it; the same powers act everywhere. ”

“ The agricultural festival was gradually transformed into one of profound meaning, by partaking in which one gained an assurance of future happiness. The wonderful miracle of reviving vegetation, of the grain which dies in the ground and springs anew to life, has often served as the warrant of man’s longing for a revival of his own life, as an assurance of his hope of immortality. So gods and goddesses of agriculture or of vegetation, which grows and dies and grows again, have become for men the lords of life and death, as we have already seen in the case of Dionysus. ”

“ The Stoic had only to appeal to common experience to show that if the body and its impulses prevail, man obviously is a slave; but if reason dominates he is free. As Epictetus taught: “Freedom and slavery, the first is the name of virtue, the other of vice, but both are the effects of choice. Those who do not have the power of choice are touched by neither of these things. ”

“ You recognize at once that we have here philosophy fired with religious emotion, that in Philo’s system at the end reason gives way before a passionate desire for revelation through union with God. Philosophy has become theosophy. The ecstacy which we have hitherto seen, has been connected chiefly with the worship of Dionysus, in which it was stimulated by means which we find offensive. But this ecstasy is not aroused by dance or music, or indeed by contemplation, but is attained in a purely passive condition when the soul is emptied of itself and becomes one with the Absolute. ”

“ They were never so much concerned with speculation as to the nature of virtue as with its practice. To them virtue was man’s highest aim, and by it they meant righteousness in the practical relations of life. They defined it as a condition of the soul in which the soul is in continuous harmony with itself. Virtue they subdivided into the four chief elements of intelligence, discretion, courage, and justice. ”

“ We find these sentiments in every writer of the first two centuries of our era who deals with contemporary society. Seneca feels that the world is lost and helpless; that life itself is a fatal gift compared with which nothing is so deceitful and treacherous. Filled with ardour for his philosophy and with confidence in the efficacy of its moral teachings, he nevertheless at times loses heart. ”

“ Socrates, the great teacher and the dramatic spokesman of Plato’s dialogues, gave the impulse to many philosophic systems. The only one we need to glance at now is that of the Cynics founded by Antisthenes, who had been one of Socrates’ many pupils. It was continued by the whimsical and notorious Diogenes of Sinope, whose name is familiar to us all. The founder of Cynicism emphasized the Socratic aim of individual virtue to the neglect of all else, for like his master he maintained that virtue was the only good, the sole aim in life, and that it was sufficient in itself for happiness. ”

“ In the Eumenides, for example, the Furies declare that no just man has ever put his hands justly to any deed and met their wrath. The lesson is that when men have taken the initial downward step themselves an evil divinity or daemon drives them on, but that the first step no man is forced to take. When, however, he has taken it, then the poet represents the sinner as through god’s will infatuated with his sin. No other extant poet shows so impressively how sin relentlessly persists through generation after generation. ”

“ There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient, eternal decree of the gods sealed with strong oaths: when one in sin stains his hands with murder, or when another joining in strife swears falsely, they become the spirits who have long life as their portion, who are doomed to wander thrice ten thousand seasons far from the blessed, being born in the course of time into all forms of mortal creatures, shifting along life’s hard paths. ”

“ Justice, however, is more than a social virtue between men; it is the chief attribute of Zeus, personified as his daughter and constant attendant: “Justice is the daughter of Zeus, glorified and honored by the gods who hold Olympus; and whenever anyone does her wrong with perverse blame, straightway she sits by Zeus, son of Cronos, and she tells him the thoughts of unjust men, that the people may pay for the folly of the princes who by their wrongful purposes and crooked speeches turn judgments from the right course.” ”

“ The Heavens will ever shield it. ’Tis their sport To turn back all things rancorous and malign From going down to the grave, and send instead The good and true. Oh, how shall we commend Such acts, how construe them? When I extol Things god-like, I find evil in the Gods. ”

“ For the poor man the poet, and apparently his contemporaries, had little compassion, since he regards poverty as proof of a lack of industry, of a failure to work unceasingly with a determined spirit, which he holds to be the only way in which man can acquire the comforts which give dignity to life. In his mind shame is the natural lot of the poor, but self-respect the proper possession of the successful worker. [32] And toil has for him a divine sanction; it is a moral duty imposed on men by the gods. By it alone men attain not only material prosperity but virtue as well. ”

“ Now since man is of course a part of the cosmos, the Stoic argued that in him the world-reason naturally expresses itself; it is that which guides him, in fact it is his reason, the directing portion of his soul. And it is the possession of this soul, itself a part of the universal reason, which makes it possible for man to live in accord with Nature, for he attains that aim whenever his soul is in agreement with the universal soul which is its source. In this way the Stoic, for all his materialism, emphasized the divine nature of man and the community of human reason with God. ”

“ But instead of listening to him I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them, and who, if they failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at her feast. ”

“ The end of man’s effort and hope is to attain to knowledge of God and thereby to find supreme happiness. But man cannot reach this by his own will or intellect, for God is so far removed from the world that he cannot be fully apprehended by one dwelling here, so that the gulf between man and God must be bridged. This is possible, Philo teaches, when the soul in ecstasy passes out of itself, beyond the sensuous world, the realm of ideas and the logos, to be at one with God. ”

“ No one who has not studied philosophy and who is not entirely pure at the time of his departure is allowed to enter the company of the gods, but the lover of knowledge only. And this is the reason, Simmias and Cebes, why the true votaries of philosophy abstain from all fleshly lusts, and hold out against them and refuse to give themselves up to them, not because they fear poverty or the ruin of their families, like the lovers of money and the world in general ”

“ We must conceive of him as absolute unity, as at once pure creative activity, the first cause, the power on which the world depends, and at the same time as the final cause toward which the world is tending. The acts of creation are constant; yet God does not create the visible world directly, but as the sun without effort or loss to itself sends out its rays, so God out of the fullness of his perfection emanates Intelligence (Νοῦς) , in which are immanent the Ideas: these are the causes of all things which come into being. ”

“ For then, and not till then, the soul will be parted from the body and exist in herself alone. In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible intercourse or communion with the body, and are not surfeited with the bodily nature, but keep ourselves pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body we shall be pure and shall hold converse with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth. ”

“ Following Plato and the Stoics Philo teaches that man’s reason, his soul, is a particle, so to speak, of the divine intelligence that has entered into the human body. The human spirit, therefore, is divine, but man’s body is mortal and sinful. Here then, as in most of the philosophies which were influenced by Platonism, a discipline is necessary to subdue the flesh and free the spirit: man must constantly exercise his choice in preferring the things of the spirit, for through the gift of God man is free with power to choose the right or wrong. ”

“ The statesman Solon assures the Athenians that their city will never come to ruin contrary to the will and intention of Zeus and the immortal gods; that ruin only can be brought upon the city by the citizens themselves, by the unjust spirit of the leaders of the people, whose mighty insolence will bring great suffering upon them. Like Aeschylus Solon believes and teaches that insolence must fail in the end and that Justice, who in silence knows all things both present and future, will recompense completely in due season. ”

“ But the soul of a philosopher, “guileless and true,” might secure release after three rebirths if each time he had chosen the higher life. Some incurable sinners were not allowed to return to earth, but when their souls approached the mouth of the cavern which led to the upper world, the mouth gave a mighty roar and drove them back, while fiends tortured them with all the sufferings which a fertile imagination could devise. The path of salvation therefore lay in following righteousness and justice, in choosing the good, that is, in true philosophy. ”

“ Now we have already seen that the soul, or at least its rational part, being divine and immortal, has an affinity for the eternal ideas and is endowed by a natural love for the true, the beautiful, and the good. It is therefore impelled toward the divine world of ideas by a natural passion, and this effort on the part of man’s reason is philosophy. The true philosopher then is the lover of truth and reality, who is absorbed in the pleasures of the soul so that he will hardly be conscious of bodily pleasure ”

“ There are three stages of Christian progress, according to Origen. In the first and lowest man may advance through faith and by a belief in the redemptive death of the historic Christ to a state of sinlessness and to fellowship with God. Here the Logos incarnate in Jesus acts through revelation and redemption as a physician to cure men of their sins. But beyond is a higher stage in which through love and knowledge the soul may mount from its view of the phenomenal world to the “invisible things of God,” that is, to an understanding of the whole creation ”