PHILO JUDÆUS.

Just as vigorous, healthy bodies that are active and quick in motion release their trainers from much care, giving them little or no trouble, and as trees of a good sort with natural, healthy growth give no trouble to their cultivators but grow finely on their own, so in the same manner a well-disposed soul, going forward to meet the lessons imparted to it, is improved more by itself than by its teachers. Taking hold of some beginning or principle of knowledge, it bounds, as the proverb says, like a horse over the plain.

Accordingly, he quickly learned arithmetic, geometry, the science of rhythm, harmony, meter, and the whole of music, both by using musical instruments and by attending lectures and explanations on these topics. Lessons on these subjects were given to him by Egyptian philosophers, who also taught him the philosophy contained in symbols—which they exhibit in those sacred characters or hieroglyphics, as they are called—as well as the philosophy concerning the respect they pay to animals, which they treat with the honors due to God.

He learned all the other branches of a cyclical education (the liberal arts) from the Greeks, and philosophers from adjacent countries taught him Assyrian literature and the knowledge of the heavenly bodies, which is so much studied by the Chaldeans. He also derived this knowledge from the Egyptians, who study mathematics above all things. He learned with great accuracy the state of that art among both the Chaldeans and Egyptians, making himself acquainted with the points where they agree and differ. He mastered all their disputes without encouraging any argumentative disposition in himself, seeking only the plain truth. His mind could not admit any falsehood, unlike those who contend violently for one particular side of a question, or who advocate any doctrine set before them, regardless of whether it deserves support, much like lawyers who defend a cause for pay and are wholly indifferent to whether their cause is just.

VI. And when he had passed the boundaries of the age of