chastisements upon his body or uproot his inclinations. In this mood
moderation is represented as the way of salvation; the abandonment of
family and social life is selfish, and betrays a lack of the humanity
which the truly good man must possess.[65] Of Philo's own domestic
life we catch only a fleeting glimpse in his writings. He realized the
place of woman in the home; "her absence is its destruction," he said;
and of his wife it is told in another of the "Fragments" that when
asked one day in an assembly of women why she alone did not wear any
golden ornament, she replied, "The virtue of a husband is a sufficient
ornament for his wife."

Though in his maturity Philo renounced the ascetic life, his ideal
throughout was a mystical union with the Divine Being. To a certain
school of Judaism, which loves to make everything rational and
moderate, mysticism is alien; it was alien indeed to the Sadducee
realist and the Karaite literalist; it was alien to the systematic
Aristotelianism of Maimonides, and it is alien alike to Western
orthodox and Reform Judaism. But though often obscured and crushed by
formal systems, mysticism is deeply seated in the religious feelings,
and the race which has developed the Cabbalah and Hasidism cannot be
accused of lack of it. Every great religion fosters man's aspiration
to have direct communion with God in some super-rational way.
Particularly should this be the case with a religion which recognizes
no intermediary. The Talmudic conceptions of [Hebrew: nb'a], prophecy,
[Hebrew: shkyna], the Divine Presence, and [Hebrew: rua hkdsh], the
holy spirit, which was vouchsafed to the saint, certainly are mystic, and
at Alexandria similar ideas inspired a striking development. Once again we
can trace the fertilizing influence of Greek ideas. Even when the old
naturalistic cults had flourished in Greece, and political life had
provided a worthy goal for man, mystical beliefs and ceremonies had a