studied Philo. He perceived so deeply, I may say so exaggeratedly, the
analogy between the Jewish and the Platonic assertions of an Absolute
and Eternal Being, side by side with the assertion of a Divine Teacher
of man, that he is said to have uttered the startling saying: "What is
Plato but Moses talking Attic?" Doubtless Plato is not that: but the
expression is remarkable, as showing the tendency of the age. He too
looks up to God with prayers for the guidance of his reason. He too
enters into speculation concerning God in His absoluteness, and in His
connection with the universe. "The Primary God," he says, "must be free
from works and a King; but the Demiurgus must exercise government, going
through the heavens. Through Him comes this our condition; through Him
Reason being sent down in efflux, holds communion with all who are
prepared for it: God then looking down, and turning Himself to each of
us, it comes to pass that our bodies live and are nourished, receiving
strength from the outer rays which come from Him. But when God turns us
to the contemplation of Himself, it comes to pass that these things are
worn out and consumed, but that the reason lives, being partaker of a
blessed life."

This passage is exceedingly interesting, as containing both the marrow
of old Hebrew metaphysic, and also certain notional elements, of which
we find no trace in the Scripture, and which may lead--as we shall find
they afterwards did lead--to confusing the moral with the notional, and
finally the notional with the material; in plain words, to Pantheism.

You find this tendency, in short, in all the philosophers who flourished
between the age of Augustus and the rise of Alexandrian Neoplatonism.
Gibbon, while he gives an approving pat on the back to his pet
"Philosophic Emperor," Marcus Aurelius, blinks the fact that Marcus's
philosophy, like that of Plutarch, contains as an integral element, a