Philo’s life-aim, as we have seen,[187] was to see God in all things and all things in God.  He is the sole principle of being, exercising continuous causality; and yet He is always at rest, for His energy is the expression of His being.  “He never ceases to create, for creation is as proper to Him as it is proper to fire to burn and to snow to cause cold."[188] Further, to Him all human activity and excellence are directly due.  He fertilizes virtue by sending down the seed from Heaven,[189] and He brings forth wisdom from the human mind by His own Divine effluence.  “It is the distinctive feature of Jewish thought,” said Spinoza, “never to make account of particular and secondary causes, but in a spirit of devotion, piety, and godliness to refer all things directly to the Deity.”  No Jewish thinker ever applied this principle more thoroughly than Philo; and it gives an unique color to his work in the history of ancient philosophy.  All our lives are one unceasing miracle, due to the constant manifestation of God’s power; and the miracles of the Bible are examples of the universal working of Divine care rather than exceptions from it.

The dominant feeling behind Greek thought is that man is the measure of all things:  Plato, attacking the standpoint of his nation, had declared that God is the measure, and Philo repeats his maxim with a new intensity.  It means for him that man’s mind is a fragment or particle of the Divine universal mind, which, however, is impotent till called into activity by the further Divine gift of inspiration.  Knowledge and happiness, therefore, come not through God, but from God.[190] “The Divine Word streams down from the fount of wisdom, and waters the plants of virtuous souls."[191] “To God alone is it fitting to use the word ‘my,’"[192] or, put in another way, man has only the usufruct and God the ownership of his powers.  Pride of intellect is therefore a deadly sin, because it involves a false, incomplete idea of God, and true knowledge involves reverence.  The ideal of the Greek sage, the independent reason, is a godless thing, and those in whom a knowledge of Greek philosophy produces intellectual pride are not disciples of Divine Wisdom.  In a fine passage Philo charges with hypocrisy those who talk in high-sounding language about the all-powerful Deity, and yet declare that by their own intellect they can comprehend the world.[193] This was the attitude not only of the proud Stoic, but of certain kindred Jewish sects, which were subject to Greek influences, such as the Gnostics and the Cainites.  And upon them Philo appears to be pouring his wrath when he exclaims:  “How have you the effrontery to go on making and listening to fine professions about piety and the honor of God, when you have within you, forsooth, the mind equal to God that comprehends all human things, and can combine good and evil portions, giving to some a mixed, to others an unmixed lot?  And when anybody accuses you of impiety, you brazenly declare that you belong to the school of that noble guide and teacher Cain (i.e. insolent reason), who bade you pay honor to the secondary rather than the primary cause.”