STATESMAN AND PHILOSOPHER 73itself." His remarks about the "politician" are here consistently dis
paraging, though not all equally bitter. One who is concerned with
public affairs would seem to be of a definitely inferior order to one
whose concerns are other-worldly; the former is, as we have seen, an
"addition" to the man who lives according to nature, with the plain im
plication that the "addition" spoils the purity of the original.^43 One can
become worthy of inheriting God only by fleeing from all handmade
and voluntary laws.^44 It was from this point of view that he made his
impassioned protest against the degradation and confusion of having to
leave a life of contemplation for political duties.^45
To go into the background of Philo's views of the value of social life
would drive us afield into the problem of the nature of the good for
man as it was discussed by the various philosophers. Plato and Aris
totle could easily be shown to have the same vacillation between praise
of the contemplative life and active interest in a philosopher's making
practical application of his most abstract thought in public affairs. Cic
ero speaks of the conflict in Stoicism between a doctrine that the good
is only a matter of inner adjustment to nature, to which the Stoics were
never consistently loyal in practice,^46 and a teaching which made room
for external goods as inferior, but real, goods.^47 It is true that a solution
had been offered by the older Stoics, for Diogenes Laertius represents
them as teaching that of the three types of life, the contemplative, the
practical, and the rational, the third is preferable, since the "rational
animal" is expressly designed by nature for both contemplation and ac
tion.^48 Such quotations could be multiplied, but Zeller^49 has long ago
shown that these statements and their frequent application by Stoics
were in real conflict with an ascetic tendency which inclined many
Stoics toward the life of a recluse. The point is that Philo's vacillation
between the two cannot be taken as indication that he was treating the
subject loosely because it had no personal interest for him. His very in
consistency is a reflection of the spirit of the age. In many moods he sin-
43- Jos., 31. 44. Mut., 26.- Spec, iii, i ff.; see above, pp. 66 f.
- De Finibus, IV, ix, 22: Quae est igitur ista philosophia, quae communi more in foro
loquitur, in libello suo? - Ibid., IV, vi, 15.
- VII, 130. Picov be TQICOV OVTCOV, decoQTiTixov xal jtoaxtixov xal Xoyixov, x6v TQITOV
(paalv aloexEOv* yeyovivai y&Q vnb xfjg cpvasoog tjtirnSec; TO Xoyvabv £cj>ov JIQOC;
•ftecoQiav xal Jiga^iv. - Philosophie der Griechen, III, i (1909), 292 ff., 300 ff.