Excerpt from About the Contemplative Life, or the Fourth Book of the Treatise Concerning Virtues Any such hypothesis ignores the philological affinities of the piece; as well as all the circumstances of its trans mission to us in the manuscripts and in ancient versions. It conflicts with chronology, rests upon wholesale mis understanding of the text, and presupposes conditions of pseud-epigraphic authorship which never did and never could exist. That it should be rapidly stereotyping itself among scholars is indicative of a prevalent and regrettable ignorance of Philo's writings; and it was in the hope of being able to correct an error which is the inversion of three centuries of religious history, that I undertook six years ago, at the instance of Professor L. Massebieau of Paris, the present edition. If he had kept his health and strength, he would have himself followed up his excellent monograph 1 with a critical edition of the Greek text. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.