hem under the governing
principle of the tenth commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," or, more
broadly, "Thou shalt not have base desires." The dietary laws are at
once a symbol and a discipline of temperance and self-control. We know
that the Greeks, as soon as they had a superficial knowledge of Jewish
observance, jeered at the barbarous and stupid superstition of
refusing to eat pork. Again we are told in the letter of the false
Aristeas that when Ptolemy's ambassadors went to Jerusalem, to summon
learned men to translate the Torah into Greek, Eleazar, the high
priest, instructed them in the deeper moral meaning of the dietary
laws. Further, in the fourth book of the Maccabees--an Alexandrian
sermon upon the Empire of Right Reason--we find an eloquent defence of
these same laws as the precepts of reason which fortify our minds.
Philo, then, is following a tradition, but he improves upon it.
Accepting the Platonic psychology, which divided the soul into reason,
temper (_i.e._, will), and desire, he shows how the aim of the Mosaic
law about food is to control desire and will, so as to make them
subservient to reason. By practicing self-restraint in the two
commonest actions of life--eating and drinking--the Israelite acquires
it in all things. The hard ascetic who would root out bodily desires
errs against human nature, but the wise legislator controls them and
curbs them by precepts, so that they are bent to the higher reason.

Modern apologists for Judaism have been found who, trying to force
science to support their tottering faith, allege that the dietary law
is hygienic. Philo relies on no such treacherous reed. We may not eat,
he says,[165] the flesh of the pig or shell-fish, not because they are
unhealthy, but because they are the sweetest and most delightful of
all food, and for that very reason they are marks of the sensual life.
This and this alone is the true religious justification of the dietary
law.

In this way, by showing how the letter represents the spirit, Philo
fulfils the law; his religion is liberal in thought, conservative in
practice. He sees clearly that to throw off the law and reject
tradition involves in the end chaos and the overthrow of
righteousness. And certain Christian--and other--theologians, if one
may make bold to say so, fail to realize the spirit of Philo, when
they speak of him as a man who approached the light, but was too tied
down by the old traditions to receive the full illu