"Nay, not so far--(for Plato shall answer, the thought is his, if mine the voice) not so far, he saith, do I pronounce the gods to be sejunct and alienate from us, as to think that not even our prayers can reach them. Not from the care of human affairs, but from contact, have I removed them. But there are certain mediary divine powers, between aether above and earth beneath, situate in that mid space of air, by whom our desires and our deserts reach the gods. These the Greeks call daemons, carriers between human and heavenly, hence of prayers, thence of gifts; back and forth they fare, hence with petition, thence with sufficiency, interpreters and bringers of salvation."[88] To cut short this flow of words, the daemons are, as is familiar to us by now, authors of divination of all kinds, each in its province. It would ill fit the majesty of the gods to send a dream to Hannibal or to soften the whetstone for Attius Navius--these are the functions of the intermediate spirits.[89] Justin's explanation of the theophanies of the Old Testament may recur to the reader's mind, and not unjustly.[90] The daemons are framed of a purer and rarer matter than we, "of that purest liquid of air, of that serene element," invisible therefore to us unless of their divine will they choose to be seen.[91] From their ranks come those "haters and lovers" of men, whom the poets describe as gods--they feel pity and indignation, pain and joy and "every feature of the human mind"; while the gods above "are lords ever of one state in eternal equability," and know no passions of any kind. The daemons share _their_ immortality and _our_ passion. Hence we may accept the local diversities of religious cult, rites nocturnal or diurnal, victims, ceremonies and ritual sad or gay, Egyptian {233} or Greek,--neglect of these things the daemons resent, as we learn in dream and oracle. The human soul, too, is "a daemon in a body"--the _Genius_ of the Latins. From this we may believe that after death souls good and bad become good and bad ghosts--_Lares_ and _Lemures_--and even gods, such as "Osiris in Egypt and AEsculapius everywhere."[92] Higher still are such daemons as Sleep and Love, and of this higher kind Plato supposes our guardian spirits to be--"spectators and guardians of individual men, never seen, ever present, arbiters not merely of all acts, but of all thoughts," and after death witnesses for or against us. Of such was Socrates' familiar daemon. Why should not we too live after the model of Socrates, studying philosophy and obeying our daemon? [Sidenote: _The Golden Ass_]