260 REV. H. J. CLARKE. 
as “that which makes will come up close to something,” 
namely, some material to which it is to give form, “it carries 
on its operations also by contact.” * Body, in short, whether 
the term denoted the substance of the sensible world or that 
of its imagined soul, was understood to imply extension in 
space; and nothing was conceived as having real existence 
but such essence or material as admits of having its mode of 
existence in some way defined by the help of some mental 
picture. 
But in the days when Stoic doctrine was still among the 
most potent of moral forces in the world of advancing thought 
and progressive culture, a new departure in the conception of 
the Logos gave a fresh stimulus to philosophic speculation. 
In the course of the first century of the Christian era certain 
notions which had been generated in the commerce that took 
place between Hebraic and Hellenic thought attained an 
exuberant development in the writings of an Alexandrian Jew 
of large gifts and liberal culture. A devout upholder of the 
authority of the oracular utterances of Moses and the Prophets, 
but a Greek in intellectual ethos and training, Philo sought to 
harmonise with his philosophic views the interpretation of 
those sacred Scriptures which he sincerely reverenced. The 
outcome of his efforts, however, it is no disparagement of his 
dialectical skill to compare to a mixture of oil and water. 
There was no possibility that intellectual energy and enthusiasm, 
together with eloquent facility in the use of a copious vocabu- 
lary, might render the product of an undertaking such as this 
either durable, or, indeed, profoundly lucid. He had hoped to 
produce a homogeneous whole, but he had attempted to 
combine incompatibilities; and therefore it was not to be 
expected that Philonism, if we may give his philosophy that 
name, would be a consistent and intelligible system, or would, 
otherwise than in his writings, long survive the mental opera- 
tion by which it had been elaborated. But the majestic rank 
it has assigned to the Logos, and the significance of the attri- 
butes it has associated under this designation, constitute for its 
leading principles a claim to careful investigation.. 
Of the manifold effects of that bias which Philo’s mind 
received from the fascinating study of the Greek philoso- 
phies, the most radically important in relation to his own was 
the deeply-rooted conception of an unoriginated substratum 
for all sensible existence,—a material devoid of quality and 
form. It is true, he in one place represents the Almighty as 
* Simplic. Scholia on Aristot. Categ. O, B, vid. Heinze, p. 88. 
