III. 7, 7-8.

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powers of heaven." ^ In the Talmud later we read that the hour of Abraham's birth was announced by the stars and that he feared from his observations of the constella- tions that he would go childless. Miinter also gives examples of the belief of the rabbis in the influence of the stars upon the destiny of the Jewish people and upon the fate of indi- vidual men, and of their belief that a star would announce the coming of the Messiah.^
From Philo's astrology it is an easy step to his frequent Perfection reveries concerning the perfection and mystic significance number of certain numbers, — a train of thought which was continued seven, by many of the church fathers, and is also found in various pagan writers of the Roman Empire.^ Thomas Browne in his enquiry into "Vulgar Errors" ^ was inclined to hold Philo even more responsible than Pythagoras or Plato for the dissemination of such doctrines. Philo himself recognizes the close connection between astrolog}' and number mys- ticism, when, after affirming the dependence of all earthly things upon the heavenly bodies, he adds : "It is in heaven, too, that the ratio of the number seven began." ^ Philo doubts if it is possible to express adequately the glories of the number seven, but he feels that he ought at least to attempt it and devotes a dozen chapters of his treatise on the creation of the world to it,^ to say nothing of other pas- sages. He notes that there are seven planets, seven circles of heaven, four quarters of the moon of seven days each, that such constellations as the Pleiades and Ursa Major consist of seven stars, and that children born at the end of
^ Der Stern der Weisen (1827), p. 36. "Nur war ihre Astrologie dem Theismus untergeordnet. Der Eine Gott erschien immer als der Herrscher des Himmelsheeres. Sie betrachteten aber die Sterne als lebende gottliche Wesen und Machte des Himmels."
'Miinter (1827), pp. 38-39, 43, 45, etc. On the subject of Jewish astrology see also : D. Nielsen, Die altarabische Mondreligion und '^'^ mosaische Uberlieferung,
Strasburg, 1904; F. Hommel, Der Gcstirndienst der alien Araber und die altisraelitische Uberlie- ferung, Munich, 1901.
' Such as Aulus Gellius, Mac- robius, and Censorinus. These writers seem to have taken it from Varro. We have also noted num- ber mysticism in Plutarch's Es- says.
* Browne (1650) IV, 12.
^ De mimdi opificio, cap. 40.
^ Ibid., caps. 30-42.
356 MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
seven months live, while those who see the light in the eighth month die. In diseases the seventh is a critical day. Also there are either seven ages of man's life, as Hippocrates says, or, in accordance with Solon's lines, man's three-score years and ten may be subdivided into ten periods of seven years each. The lyre of seven strings corresponds to the seven planets, and in speech there are seven vowels. There are seven divisions of the head — eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth, seven divisions of the body, seven kinds of motion, seven things seen, and even the senses are seven rather than five if we add the vocal and generative organs.^
Philo's ideal sect, the Therapeutae, are wont to assemble as a prelude to their greatest feast at the end of seven weeks, "venerating not only the simple week of seven days but also its multiplied power," ^ but the chief festival itself occurs on the fiftieth day, "the most holy and natural of numbers, being compounded of the power of the right- angled triangle, which is the principle of the origination and condition of the whole." ^
The numbers four and six, however, yield little to seven and fifty in the matter of perfection. It was the fourth day that God chose for the creation of the heavenly bodies, and He did not need six days for the entire work of crea- tion, but it was fitting that that perfect work should be accomplished in a perfect number of days. Six is the product of the first female number, two, and the first male number, three. Indeed, the first three numbers, one, two, and three, whether added or multiplied, give six.^ As for four, there are that many elements and seasons ; it is the only number produced by the same number — two — whether added to
^ For the later influence of such having the superior dignity of doctrines in the Mohammedan Prophet. The last of the forty- world see D. B. Macdonald, Mus- nine Imans, this Muhammad ibn lini Theology, Jurisprudence, and Isma'il, is the greatest and last of Constitutional Theory, 1903, pp. the Prophets." 42-3. concerning the "Seveners" 3^^ ^-^^ contemplativa, cap. 8. and the Twelvers and the doc- j^ ^jjj ^^ recalled that the fifty t","?. of the hidden Iman. _ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^. ^^ Justinian
Ilnd., Thus we have a series ^^^ similarly divided. of seven times seven Imans, the
first, and thereafter each seventh, * De mundi opificio, cap. 3.
XIV PHILO JUDAEUS 357
itself or multiplied by itself ; it is the first square and as such the emblem of justice and equality; it also represents the cube or solid, as the number one stands for a point, two for a line, and three for a surface.^ Furthermore four is the source of "the all-perfect decade," since one and two and three and four make ten. At this we begin to suspect, and with considerable justification, as the writings of other dev- otees of the philosophy of numbers would show, that the number of perfect numbers is legion. We may not, how- ever, follow Philo much farther on this topic. Suffice it to add that he finds the fifth day fitting for the creation of animals possessed of five senses,^ while he divides the ten plagues of Egypt into three dealing with the more solid elements, earth and water, and performed by Aaron; three dealing with air and fire which were entrusted to Moses; the seventh was committed to both Aaron and Moses ; while the other three God reserved for Himself.^
Philo believed in a world of spirits, both the angels of Spirits of the Jews and the demons of the Greeks. When God said : the air. "Let us make man," Philo believed that He was addressing those assistant spirits who should be held responsible for the viciousness to which man alone of all creation is liable.* Of the divine rational natures Philo regarded some as incor- poreal, others like the stars as possessed of bodies.^ He also believed that there were spirits in the air as well as afar off in heaven. He could not see why the air should not be inhabited when there were stars in the ether and fish in the sea as well as other animals upon land.^ Indeed he argued that it would be absurd that the element which was essential for the vitality even of land and aquatic animals should have no living beings of its own. That these spirits of the air must be invisible did not trouble him, since the human soul is also invisible.
^ Dc mundi opificto, caps. 15-16. 'Vita Mosis, I, 17.
See also on perfect numbers On * De mundi opificio, cap. 24.
the Allegories of the Sacred Laws. ^ Ibid., cap. 50.
^Ibid., cap. 20. '^ De somniis, II, 21-22.
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MAGIC AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE chap.
Of Philo's five books on dreams only two are extant. They suffice to show, however, that he accepted the art of divination from dreams. Of dreams he distinguished three varieties : those direct from God which require no inter- pretation; those in which the dreamer's mind moves in unison with the world soul, and which are neither entirely clear nor yet very obscure — an instance is Jacob's vision of the ladder ; and third, those in which the mind is moved by a prophetic frenzy of its own, and which require the science of interpretation — such dreams were Joseph's concerning his brothers, and those of the butler and the baker at Pharaoh's court.^
The recent war and its accompaniments and sequels have brought home to some the conviction that our modern civili- zation is after all not vastly superior to that of some preced- ing ages. To those who still imagine that because modern science has freed us from much past superstition concerning nature, we are therefore free from political fakirs, from social absurdities, and from fallacious procedure and reason- ing in many departments of life, the reading may be recom- mended of a passage in Philo's treatise on dreams,^ in which he classifies the art of politics along with that of magic. He compares Joseph's coat of many colors to "the much-variegated web of political aflFairs" where along with "the smallest possible portion of truth" falsehoods of every shade of plausibility are interwoven; and he compares poli- ticians and statesmen to augurs, ventriloquists, and sorcerers, "men skilful in juggling and in incantations and in tricks of all kinds, from whose treacherous arts it is very difficult to escape." He adds that Moses very naturally represented Joseph's coat as blood-stained, since all statecraft is tainted with wars and bloodshed.
Twelve centuries later we find Philo's association of politicians with magicians repeated by his compatriot Moses Maimonides in the More Nevochim or Guide for the Per-
^ De soinniis, II, i.
' Cap. 38.
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plexed^ a work which appeared almost immediately in Latin translation and from which this very passage is cited by Albertus Magnus in his discussion of divination by dreams.^ There are some men, says Albert, in whom the intellect is abundant and active and clear. Such men are akin to the superior substances, that is, to the angels and stars, and therefore Moses of Egypt, i.e., Maimonides, calls them sages. But there are others who, according to Albert, con- found true wisdom with sophistry and are content with mere probabilities and imaginations and are at home in. "rhetorical and civil matters." Maimonides, however, de- scribed this class a little differently, saying that in them the imaginative faculty is preponderant and the rational faculty imperfect. "Whence arises the sect of politicians, of legisla- tors, of diviners, of enchanters, of dreamers, , . . and of prestidigiteurs who work marvels by strange cunning and occult arts." ^
^11, Z7.
'Cap. 5.
^ Since I finished this chapter, I have noted that the "folk-lore in the Old Testament" has led Sir James Frazer to write a passage on "the harlequins of history" somewhat similar to that of Philo on Joseph's coat of many colors. After remarking that friends and foes behold these politicians of the present and historical figures of the future from opposite sides and
A thought repeated by Moses
Maimon- ides and Albertus Magnus.
see only that particular hue of the coat which happens to be turned toward them, Sir James concludes (1918), II, 502, "It is for the im- partial historian to contemplate these harlequins from every side and to paint them in their coats of many colors, neither altogether so white as they appeared to their friends nor altogether so black as they seemed to their enemies." But who can paint out the blood- stains ?