Complete Works of Philo Judaeus (Vol. 6)

487 M. §. 1. 93 It is appropriate to call upon God in every obscure and serious matter, because He is a good creator, and nothing is obscure to Him, for He has attained the most precise knowledge of all things; but it is most necessary for the discourse on the incorruptibility of the world. For there is nothing more perfect than the world among perceptible things, nor more complete than God among intelligible things. The mind is always the leader of perception, and the intelligible is the leader of the perceptible; it is the duty of those whose nature is endowed with a greater desire for truth to inquire into the things of the leaders and masters. If, therefore, we have trained ourselves in the doctrines of prudence, temperance, and all virtue, and have cast away the stains from passions and diseases, perhaps God would not 94 have refused to teach those souls that are thoroughly purified and enlightened, in their own image, the knowledge of heavenly things—whether through dreams, or through oracles, or through signs, or portents. But since we have absorbed the guesses and patterns of folly, injustice, and other vices, and hold them as stains that are hard to wash away, we must be content if we find through them some image of the truth by way of analogy. It is fitting, therefore, for those who inquire whether the world is incorruptible—since "corruption" and "world" are terms used in many ways—first to investigate each of these names, so that we may distinguish how they are currently understood and defined. And we must not enumerate all the things that are signified, but only those that are useful for the present teaching.

§. 2. The world is said to be, in the first system, that which consists of the heaven and the stars, surrounding the earth and the animals and plants upon it; according to another, it is the heaven alone. Looking upon this, Anaxagoras replied to one who asked why he preferred to spend his nights in the open air, that it was in order to behold the world, alluding to the dances and revolutions of the stars.

488 M. 95