which it consists. No new thought, no
original principle, supervened. It is sufficient to say that, as time
went on, the differences between the schools became softened, and
their agreements became more prominent. As intellectual vigour wanes,
there is always the tendency to forget differences, to rest, as the
orientals do, in the good-natured and comfortable delusion that all
religions and all philosophies really mean much the same thing. Hence
eclecticism became characteristic of the schools. {370} They did not
keep themselves distinct. We find Stoic doctrines taught by Academics,
Academic doctrines by Stoics. Only the Epicureans kept their race
pure, and stood aloof from the general eclecticism of the time.
Certain other tendencies also made their appearance. There was a
recrudescence of Pythagoreanism, with its attendant symbolism and
mysticism. There grew up a tendency to exalt the conception of God so
high above the world, to widen so greatly the gulf which divides them,
that it was felt that there could be no community between the two,
that God could not act upon matter, nor matter upon God. Such
interaction would contaminate the purity of the Absolute. Hence all
kinds of beings were invented, demons, spirits, and angels, intended
to fill up the gap, and to act as intermediaries between God and the
world.

As an example of these latter tendencies, and as precursor of
Neo-Platonism proper, Philo the Jew deserves a brief mention. He lived
at Alexandria between 30 B.C. and 50 A.D. A staunch upholder of the
religion and scriptures of the Hebrew race, he believed in the verbal
inspiration of the Old Testament. But he was learned in Greek studies,
and thought that Greek philosophy was a dimmer revelation of those
truths which were more perfectly manifested in the sacred books of his
own race. And just as Egyptian priests, out of national vanity, made
out that Greek philosophy came from Egypt, just as orientals now
pretend that it came from India, so Philo declared that the origin of
all that was great in Greek philosophy was to be found in Judea. Plato
and Aristotle, he was certain, were followers of Moses, used the Old
Testament, and gained their wisdom therefrom! {371} Philo's own ideas
were governed by the attempt to fuse Jewish theology and Greek
philosophy into a homogeneous system. It was Philo, therefore, who was
largely responsible for contaminating the pure clear air of Greek
thought with the enervating fogs