e God brings
no simple thing to fulfilment."[238] There is an idea of stars, of
grass, of man, of virtue, of music. And the Platonic conception
receives a religious sanction. The ideas are a necessary step between
God and the material universe, and those who deny them throw all
things into confusion.[239] "God would not touch matter Himself, but
He did not grudge a share of His nature to it through His powers, of
which the true name is ideas." We have already noticed[240] how
ingeniously Philo deduces the Theory of Ideas from the Biblical
account of the creation, and associates it with the Hebraic conception
of the ministerial Wisdom and Word. He, however, gives a new direction
to the Platonic theory, owing to his Hebraic conception of God. The
ideas with him are not the thoughts of an impersonal mind, but the
emanations of a personal, volitional Deity. Keeping close to Jewish
tradition, he says that they are the words of the Deity speaking. As
human speech consists of incorporeal ideas, which produce an effect
upon the minds of others, so the Divine speech is a pattern of
incorporeal ideas which impress themselves upon a formless void, and
so create the material world.[241] In this way Philo associates his
cosmology with his theology. The creative "Ideas" are equated
collectively with the Supreme Logos,[242] individually with the Logoi
which represent God's particular activities. Thus the Logos represents
the whole ideal or noetic world, "the kingdom of Heaven"; and it is in
this metaphysical sense that the Logos is the first creation, "the
first-born son of God," prior to the physical universe, which is His
grandson. The whole universe is thus seen as the orderly manifestation
of one principle. Philo, expanding a favorite image of the Haggadah,
illustrates God's creation by the simile of a king founding a city.
"He gets to him an architect, who first designs in his mind the parts
of the perfect city, and then, looking continually to his model,
begins to construct the city of stones and wood. So when God resolved
to found the world-city, He first brought its form into mind, and
using this as a model he completed the visible world."[243]

The theory of religious idealism is the centre of Philo's philosophy,
and provides the basis of his explanation of the material universe.
Physics, indeed, he considered of small account, because he believed
there could be no certainty in such speculations.[244] His mind was
utterly un