Jewish influences throughout are the determining element of Philo’s teaching; they are the dynamic forces working upon the Greek matter and producing the new Platonism, which constitutes Philo’s contribution to Greek philosophy.  It may, indeed, be said that his Hebraism makes Philo anti-philosophical, because he has no desire or hope of adding to positive knowledge, but aims only at the calm of the individual soul in union with its God.  The Platonic Theory of Ideas, metaphysical in origin, plays a very important part in his works, but it is adapted mystically, and turned from an ideal of the human intellect to a support of monotheism and piety.  Here Philo is at once the leader and the child of his generation; men were no longer satisfied with rational systems, but wanted a religious philosophy, based upon a transcendental principle and a Divine revelation which could give them some certainty and some positive hope in life.  Doubtless, the strong mystical tendency in Philo destroyed the balance between the intuitive and the discursive reason which makes the perfect philosopher.  In his overpowering passion for God, he distrusts overmuch the analytical efforts of the human mind.  Nevertheless, his acquired Hellenism gives his Jewish conceptions a philosophical impress, and this has made him the model of the school of religious philosophers.  The ministerial “Word” became the “ideal” expression of God’s mind, the governing reason, the world-soul; the angels were spiritualized as a kingdom of Ideas.  Piety received an intellectual as well as a religious value, and the Mosaic law was raised to a higher dignity as an ethical code of universal validity.

A complete harmony between the Hellenic and the Hebraic outlook upon life was impossible, but Philo at least accomplished a harmony between Hebraic monotheism and Greek metaphysics.  He desired to show that faith and philosophy were in agreement, and that the imaginative and reflective conceptions of God and the Divine government were in unison.  And he may be considered to have realized his desire in his synthesis of Jewish theology and Platonic idealism.  He is through and through a great interpreter, elucidating points of unity between distinct systems of thought.  In him the fusion of cultures, which began with the Septuagint translation, reached its culmination.  It reached its zenith and straightway the severance began.

In the next chapter we shall trace Philo’s place in Jewish thought; here we may glance at his place in the development of Greek philosophy.  The fusion between Eastern and Western thought, which he himself so strikingly illustrates, continued to dominate philosophy for the next four hundred years; and Plato, who, with his deep religious spirit, had a broad affinity with the Oriental conception of the universe, was the supreme philosophical master.  All the chief teachers looked to him for the intellectual basis of their ideas and read into his works their particular religious