accept them, for they save them the trouble of thinking for themselves.
Besides, the great god of the Jews is said to have dictated all that this
book contains to its writers, just as I dictate to Philippus, my hump-
backed secretary, all that I want said. They regard everyone as a
blasphemer and desecrator who thinks that anything written in that roll
is erroneous, or even merely human. Plato's doctrines are not amiss, and
yet Aristotle had criticised them severely and attempted to confute them.
I myself incline to the views of the Stagyrite, you to those of the noble
Athenian, and how many good and instructive hours we owe to our
discussions over this difference of opinion! And how amusing it is to
listen when the Platonists on the one hand and the Aristotelians on the
other, among the busy threshers of straw in the Museum at Alexandria,
fall together by the ears so vehemently that they would both enjoy
flinging their metal cups at each others' heads--if the loss of the wine,
which I pay for, were not too serious to bear. We still seek for truth;
the Jews believe they possess it entirely.

"Even those among them who most zealously study our philosophers believe
this; and yet the writers of this book know of nothing but actual
present, and their god--who will no more endure another god as his equal
than a citizen's wife will admit a second woman to her husband's house--
is said to have created the world out of nothing for no other purpose but
to be worshipped and feared by its inhabitants.

"Now, given a philosophical Jew who knows his Empedocles--and I grant
there are many such in Alexandria, extremely keen and cultivated men--
what idea can he form in his own mind of 'creation out of nothing?' Must
he not pause to think very seriously when he remembers the fundamental
axiom that 'out of nothing, nothing can come,' and that nothing which has
once existed can ever be completely annihilated? At any rate the