Following Plato and the Stoics Philo teaches that man’s reason, his soul, is a particle, so to speak, of the divine intelligence that has entered into the human body. The human spirit, therefore, is divine, but man’s body is mortal and sinful. Here then, as in most of the philosophies which were influenced by Platonism, a discipline is necessary to subdue the flesh and free the spirit: man must constantly exercise his choice in preferring the things of the spirit, for through the gift of God man is free with power to choose the right or wrong. The moral obligation of man and the path of his salvation is the same as we have seen in earlier Greek thought. To this end Philo lays much weight on practice and education as contributing to advance in virtue; he is fired with a passionate longing for purity. In a notable passage he speaks thus to his own soul: “Haste thee, O my soul, to become God’s dwelling place, pure, holy; to become strong instead of utterly weak, powerful instead of impotent, wise instead of foolish, most reasonable instead of wandering.”[247] Yet he goes beyond his predecessors in teaching that man is so possessed by sin that he can escape from the bondage only by divine help; that his own reason and his own will are insufficient for the task. Knowledge and virtue are not acquired by unaided human effort, but are the gifts of God. Philo outdoes even the Stoics in requiring man to free himself from the passions of the body, and yet he points out that just because man is subject to these passions, because he is a sinner, he cannot unaided follow and imitate God, or make himself God’s holy temple. Man’s goodness then is due to the favor of God; salvation is an act of grace. The end of man’s effort and hope is to attain to knowledge of God and thereby to find supreme happiness. But man cannot reach this by his own will or intellect, for God is so far removed from the world that he cannot be fully apprehended by one dwelling here, so that the gulf between man and God must be bridged. This is possible, Philo teaches, when the soul in ecstasy passes out of itself, beyond the sensuous world, the realm of ideas and the logos, to be at one with God. This vision of God is the supreme blessing, accorded only to the most perfect and holy among men; in it the human soul finds not only its rest and full satisfaction, but its own consummation.[248] You recognize at once that we have here philosophy fired with religious emotion, that in Philo’s system at the end reason gives way before a passionate desire for revelation through union with God. Philosophy has become theosophy. The ecstacy which we have hitherto seen, has been connected chiefly with the worship of Dionysus, in which it was stimulated by means which we find offensive. But this ecstasy is not aroused by dance or music, or indeed by contemplation, but is attained in a purely passive condition when the soul is emptied of itself and becomes one with the Absolute.