Yet with his view of the transcendence of God, Philo could not say that God is present in the world save in his acts; and these acts he does not perform directly, for if God were to deal directly with the matter out of which the visible world is made, contact with that matter would defile the divine perfection. The creation of the world, therefore, God accomplished by incorporeal powers (δυνάμεις), by ideas (ἰδέαι), which are his servants.[245] The chief of these is the supreme reason, the word, the logos. In this logos all the ideas have their place, as the plan of a city has its place in the soul of its architect. The logos stands midway between God and the created world; it is not eternal as God is, or mortal as we, but occupies a middle position. The indebtedness of Philo to Plato is self-evident. Plato’s absolute and Plato’s ideas have been made mediary between the transcendent God and the visible world. This term, logos, the word, had been familiar not only to Greek philosophy from the time of Heraclitus but it had also a verbal parallel at least in certain Jewish expressions, “the wisdom of God,” “the word of God,” which Philo interprets in terms of the logos. According to Philo the logos has a double rôle. Through the logos God created the world out of inert and formless matter, and continues to reveal himself through it to the world. The logos also serves as the high priest, the intercessor and advocate of the world with God.[246] Let me here note, however, that in Philo’s thought the logos could not take corporeal form; it could not become flesh and dwell among us, and therefore it was not possible that the logos should be identified completely with the idea of the Jewish Messiah.