Philosophy, too, rejects the Strifes, the Prayers, the Terrors, and the Fears, which Homeric poesy elevates to the divine rank.[134] Its teachings, moreover, are often at variance with religious practices established or recognized by Law and Prescription, as when Xenophanes chid the Egyptians for lamenting Osiris as a mortal, while yet worshipping him as a god. Poets and legislators, in their turn, refuse to recognize the metaphysical conceptions—“Ideas, Numbers, Unities, Spirits”—which philosophers—Platonists, Pythagoreans, and Stoics—have put in the place of Deity.[135] This clashing of discordant elements in the mass of the popular tradition is audible in Plutarch’s exposition of his own views; a fact which is less to be wondered at when we accept the hint furnished in the allusion to Osiris just quoted, and note that Plutarch will not confine his efforts, as “arbitrator between the three Factions which dispute about the nature of the Gods,” to the sphere of Græco-Roman Mythology.[136] But although he will sit in turn at the feet of poets, philosophers, and legislators, borrowing, from Science, Custom, Tradition alike, any teaching which promises ethical usefulness, he frequently insists, both in general terms and in particular discussions on points of practical morals, that Reason must be the final judge of what is worthy of selection as the basis of moral action. Philosophy, in his beautiful metaphor, so full of solemn meaning to a Greek ear, must be our Mystagogue to Theology: we must borrow Reason from Philosophy, and take her as our guide to the mysteries of Religion, reverently submitting every detail of creed or practice to her authority.[137] We shall then avoid the charge that we take with our left hand what our teachers—our legislative, mythological, philosophic instructors—have offered with their right. The selecting and controlling power of Reason, applied to philosophical discussions, will enable us to attain to a becoming conception of the nature of the Deity; applied to the matter of Mythology, it will enable us to reject the narratives, at once discreditable and impossible, which have become current respecting the traditional gods; and, in the sphere of Law and Custom, it will enable us correctly to interpret the legal ordinances and established rules connected with sacrifices and other religious celebrations. The assumption which inspires all Plutarch’s arguments on matters of Religion is that these three sources supply a rational basis for belief and conduct: but that superstition on the one hand, and atheistic misrepresentation on the other, have done so much to obscure the true principles of belief that Philosophy must analyse the whole material over again, and dissociate the rational and the pure from crude exaggerations and unintelligent accretions.[138] It must be admitted that he applies no definite rules of criticism, constructs no scientifically exact system of analysis, propounds no infallible dogmas.