STATESMAN AND PHILOSOPHER 79its legal system, for while a state is made up of dwellings, inhabitants,
and laws,^69 its being is fundamentally in its laws.
I have elsewhere discussed Philo's notion of natural law, and need not
go into details here.^70 In substance Philo thought of the Absolute as be
ing the "archetypal pattern of laws, just as the conceptual sun is of the
sensible sun, for from the invisible source the conceptual sun furnishes
visible brilliance to the sun that is seen."^71 God is not Himself law, for
that would be too specific a formulation to be associated with the Abso
lute. But He is the pattern and source of law, which gets its first and
highest expression in the Logos as it streams from Him, the Law of all
other things. The law of the state is always to be tested by its conformity
with this supreme Law. But the great difficulty is how to get a body of
state law which will stand such a test. From the point of view of state
law, Philo uses the familiar Stoic definition: law is a logos or formula
ordaining what is to be done and prohibiting what is not to be done.^72
This definition is also applied to the law of Nature, which is "the Logos
of Nature ordaining what must be done, and prohibiting what must
not be done."^73 It is this Logos of Nature, the 6p0oc Xoyoc, which is the
source of all other laws.^74 Philo did not mean this literally. Unfortu
nately it is an ideal, not a reality, that the Logos is the source of civil
law. Even in Athens and Sparta, fine laws as these cities had, the civil
laws were not the ideal, he points out, and the sage had frequently to
disregard them, look beyond them to the higher law itself.^75 This was
precisely the position taken in all Greek legal tradition. Always there
was the desire to make the written law what it ought to be, a codifica
tion of what was true, right, just, the will of the gods, but always there
recurred the sense of failure in a given body of laws.^76 Sometimes the
law allowed a scoundrel to live with impunity, and sometimes an inno
cent man was legally guilty. As Aristotle said, "According to the writ
ten law he is liable and has committed an offence, but according to the
truth he has committed no offence, and this sort of problem is a matter
of equity."^77 The matter was much discussed in Philo's day.^78 In fact
- Post., 52. 70. See my By Light, Light, Chap. II.
- Spec, i, 279. 72. Praem., 55.
- Jos., 29; Mig., 130. For Stoic parallels see SVF, III, 314, 315, 332. But the definition must
not be taken as exclusively Stoic, for see Arist., RheU, 1373b 19 f. On confusing Philo's notion
of the Law of Nature with the Stoic see reference in note 70. - Prob., 47. 75. Ibid.
- Hirzel, Themis, Di\e, und Verwandtes, 108 ff., treats this very well.
- RheU, i, 13; 1374a 36 f. See this entire chapter. 78. Cicero, Repub., ii, 43.