Philo had large sympathies with the Essenic development of Judaism, and he speaks at times as though he had joined one of their communities, and therein had been initiated into the great mysteries and secret philosophies of the sages. We have noted that he offers his most precious wisdom to the worthy few alone, "who in all humility practice genuine piety, free from all false pretence." They, in turn, are to discourse on these doctrines only to other members of the brotherhood. "I bid ye, initiated brethren, who listen with chastened ears, receive these truly sacred mysteries in your inmost souls, and reveal them not to one of the uninitiated, but laying them up in your hearts, guard them as a most excellent treasure in which the noblest of possessions is stored, the knowledge, namely, of the First Cause and of virtue, and moreover of what they generate."[338] These mysteries, it is not unlikely, represent according to some scholars the [Hebrew: sod] of the Talmudical rabbis, which was elaborately developed in the Zohar and kindred writings. Be this as it may, Philo's religious intensity expresses the spirit of the Cabbalists, his mystic soaring is the prototype of their theosophical ecstasies; his persistent declaration that God encloses the universe, but is Himself not enclosed by anything, contains the root of their conception of the En Sof ([Hebrew: 'yn sof]),[339] his Logos-idealism, with its Divine effluences, which are the true causes of all changes, physical and mental, is companion to their system of [Hebrew: 'olmim] and [Hebrew: sfirot], emanations and spheres. His fancies about sex and the struggle between a male and female principle in all things[340] are a constant theme of their teachers, and form a special section of their wisdom, [Hebrew: sof htsrog], the mystery of generation. His conception of the Logos as the heavenly archetype of the human race, the "Man-himself," is the Platonic counterpart of their [Hebrew: adm kdmon], or "primal man," who is known in the ancient allegorizing of the Song of Songs. His number-mysticism and his speech-idealism reappear more crudely, but not obscurely, in their ideas of creative letters, of which the cosmogony by the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in the Sefer Yezirah is typical. Finally, his teachings of ecstasy and Divine possession are repeated in divers ways in their descriptions of the pious life ([Hebrew: hnanot]).