First Complete Latin Philo

...by a far better part, by which, having been led to the highest summit of intelligible things, it seems to reach toward the great King himself. Then truly, into the soul eager for seeing, a most pure and most unmixed ray of divine light is poured out like a torrent, so that the eye of the mind grows dim at that splendor. But because not every image reflects the archetypal exemplar, and many are dissimilar, after the words TRULY ACCORDING TO THE IMAGE, there was added more significantly AND LIKENESS, so that an exact seal might be understood, having a most evident form. For the prophet introduces the Father of this universe saying these things:

Let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness.

Someone might say: does he, whom all things obey, have need of anyone? Or while he was making the heaven, the earth, and the seas, did he need no co-worker, yet when about to make man, so small and fragile an animal, was he unable to fashion him by his own strength without the help of another? It is necessary that God alone knows the truest cause of this matter; however, that which through credible conjectures seems agreeable to reason must not be hidden. It is this: Of things which are in nature, some are reckoned to be participants neither of virtue nor of vice, such as plants and brutes—the former because they are inanimate and by their very nature devoid of imagination, the latter because they lack mind and reason. But the mind and reason seem to be, as it were, the dwelling place of vice and virtue, in which they conveniently inhabit. Other things likewise are endowed with virtue alone and have nothing at all of vice, such as the stars. For these are said to be living beings, and indeed intelligent ones; or rather singular minds, entirely upright and incapable of any vice. Again, others are mixed from both natures, such as man, who is capable of opposites: of prudence and imprudence, temperance and incontinence, fortitude and timidity, justice and injustice; and to speak briefly, of good and evil, the base and the honorable, virtue and vice. Therefore, it was fitting that the universal Father God should make good things by himself alone, as being kindred to him; just as the creation of indifferent things was not foreign to him, since these also are free from vice, which is hostile to God. But the creation of mixed things was partly appropriate to him and partly inappropriate: appropriate because of the better idea mixed into them, but inappropriate because of the contrary and worse part. Wherefore concerning the generation of man alone it is written:

God said, Let us make man:

which indicates that others were taken as co-workers, so that the irreproachable wills and actions of a man conducting himself rightly may be attributed to God, the ruler of all; but the contrary ones to others subject to him. For it was fitting that the Father should not be the cause of evils to his children. And evil is vice, and vicious actions. Moreover, it was beautifully done that when he had spoken of "man" in the generic sense, he soon distinguished the species, saying that

Male and female were created,

although their own form had not yet fallen to each, since the ultimate species are contained in the genus, and appear as if in a mirror to those who see more sharply. Here someone may ask the cause why man is the last of the works in the creation of the world. For after all other things, the Founder and Father made him, as the sacred writings teach. Those who search into the law more deeply, and examine it as much as possible with the greatest diligence, say that after God admitted man into his kinship, having bestowed reason as a gift far the best, he did not even grudge him the rest; but as for a most familiar and most friendly animal, all things which in the world...