n
religion. The Stoics, who were the most powerful school of his day,
regarded as the ideal of goodness life according to unbending reason
and in complete independence of God or man. Philo understands God as a
personal power making for righteousness, and man's excellence,
accordingly, which is likeness to God, is piety and charity.[269]
Above all he insists upon Faith ([Greek: pistis]) and he defines
virtue as a condition of soul which fixes its hopes upon the truly
Existent God. The Stoics also professed to honor faith or confidence
above all things, but the virtue which they meant was reliance upon
man's own powers. Philo's virtue is almost the converse of this. Man
must feel completely dependent upon God, and his proper attitude is
humility and resignation. So only can he receive within his soul the
seed of goodness, and finally the Divine Logos.[270] Yet at the same
time Philo remains loyal to the Jewish ideal of conduct: faith without
works is empty, and, as he puts it, "The true-born goods are faith and
consistency of word and action."[271]

The attainment of the highest excellence demands severe discipline,
save for those few blessed souls whom God perfects without any effort
on their part. The rest can only secure self-realization by
self-renunciation; they must avoid the bodily passions and bodily
lusts.[272] At times the Divine enthusiasm causes Philo, like many a
Jewish saint and like his master Plato, to scorn all bodily
limitations and recommend "insensibility" ([Greek: apatheia])[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 ([Hebrew: ytshk]), 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 God than flight from all temptations. In his later
writings, therefore, he exhibits a striking moderation. He reproaches
the ascetics for their "savage enthusiasm,"[2