Tilden: Philo Judaeus 



37 



but the various countries in which their fathers, grandfathers, and 

 - ancestors have dwelt they regard as their fatherlands, for in them 

 they were born and bred" (II, 524). 



And from the broader view of citizenship, he says: ^^Let there be 

 one bond of affection and one password of friendship, devotion to 

 God, making piety the motive of every word and deed" (II, 259), 

 and again: 'Tor the most potent love charm and the indissoluble 

 bond of good-will that makes for unity, is the worship of the one 

 God", and lastly: Relationship is not measured by birth alone, 

 under the leadership of truth, but by similarity of interests and the 

 pursuit of the same ends." 



After this examination of Philo's religious ideas one feels that in 

 spite of the strangeness of the doctrines here and there, and the 

 curious blend of Hebraism and Platonism, we have in him a true 

 philosopher and as earnest a seeker after God as any of those des- 

 cribed in Canon Farrar's justly famous book. It is easy for a modern 

 to sneer at the knowledge and the speculation of the ancients, 

 but are we sure that centuries hence our ideas will not be the subjects 

 of the jeers and scoffs of a more advanced world? 



On this point Anna M. Stoddart, in her fascinating Life of 

 Paracelsus, p. 105, quotes the words of Anatole France: ^'Le progres 

 des sciences rend inutile les ouvrages qui ont le plus aide a ce progres. 

 Comme ces ouvrages ne servent plus, la jeunesse croit de bonne 

 foi qu'ils n'ont jamais servi a rien." 



To this she adds this comment: "Anatole France in these signifi- 

 cant words has laid bare our intellectual ingratitude, our inability 

 to realize the miracles of a past which engendered our miraculous 

 present." 



The same is more fully expressed by Joseph B. Mayor, in his 

 Sketch of Ancient Philosophy, p. XIV: 'Tt is possible to be provincial 

 in regard to time, as well as in regard to space; and there is no more 

 mischievous provincialism than that of the man who accepts blindly 

 the fashionable belief, or no-belief, of his particular time, without 

 caring to inquire what were the ideas of the countless generations 

 which preceded, or what are likely to be the ideas of the generations 

 whjch will follow. However firm may be our persuasion of the 

 Divinely guided progress of our race, the fact of a general forward 

 movement in the stream of history is not inconsistent with all sorts 

 of eddies and retardations at particular points; and before we can 

 be sure that such points are not to be found in our own age, we must 

 have some knowledge of the past development of thought, and have 

 taken the trouble to compare our own ways of thinking and acting 

 with those that have prevailed in other epochs of humanity." 



