Taken
alone, this is inferior to the life of the saint and philosopher, but
mixed with the other it produces the perfect man, for the truly good
man must take his part in public life. The story of Joseph, then,
illustrates the full humanity of Moses' scheme, and it marks also,
according to Philo, the great moral lesson, that if there be one spark
of nobility in a man's soul, God will find it and cause it to shine
forth.[141] For Joseph, until he comes down to Egypt, is not a
virtuous man, but full of conceit and unworthy aspiration for
supremacy; he shows his true worth when he is sold into slavery; and
then by the Divine inspiration he becomes the ideal statesman. Very
suggestive is Philo's homily, by which he develops the Bible
narrative, that the function of the statesman is to expound
dreams;[142] because his task is to interpret the life of man, which
is one long dream of changing scenes, wherein we forget what has gone
before, as the fleeting shadow leads us from childhood to youth, from
youth to manhood, from manhood to old age. Lastly, from the story of
Joseph he draws the lesson that when the Hebrew has attained to a high
position in a foreign land, as in Egypt, where there is utter
blindness about the true God, he can and should retain his national
laws,[143] and not assimilate the practices of his environment.
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