have distorted and overlaid it. Let us believe, or at least hope, the
same for a few minutes, of Philo, and try to find out what was the
secret of his power, what the secret of his weakness.

First: I cannot think that he had to treat his own sacred books
unfairly, to make them agree with the root-idea of Socrates and Plato.
Socrates and Plato acknowledged a Divine teacher of the human spirit;
that was the ground of their philosophy. So did the literature of the
Jews. Socrates and Plato, with all the Greek sages till the Sophistic
era, held that the object of philosophy was the search after that which
truly exists: that he who found that, found wisdom: Philo's books
taught him the same truth: but they taught him also, that the search
for wisdom was not merely the search for that which is, but for Him who
is; not for a thing, but for a person. I do not mean that Plato and the
elder Greeks had not that object also in view; for I have said already
that Theology was with them the ultimate object of all metaphysic
science: but I do think that they saw it infinitely less clearly than
the old Jewish sages. Those sages were utterly unable to conceive of an
absolute truth, except as residing in an absolutely true person; of
absolute wisdom, except in an absolutely wise person; of an absolute
order and law, except in a lawgiver; of an absolute good, except in an
absolutely good person: any more than either they or we can conceive of
an absolute love, except in an absolutely loving person. I say boldly,
that I think them right, on all grounds of Baconian induction. For all
these qualities are only known to us as exhibited in persons; and if we
believe them to have any absolute and eternal existence at all, to be
objective, and independent of us, and the momentary moods and sentiments
of our own mind, they must exist in some absolute and eternal person, or
they are mere notions, abstractions, words, which have no counterparts.