The intermingling of the doctrines of various philosophic sects is interestingly conspicuous throughout these discussions on the nature of God; and not less than elsewhere in the noble observations of the Platonist Ammonius, which have been quoted from the “De Ε apud Delphos.” It is equally interesting to note that all the speakers in that dialogue, while looking with their mind’s eye far beyond any individual member of the Olympian Pantheon to that divine power whose functions correspond with the essential requirements of the loftiest monotheism, yet use the name of Apollo as the professed nucleus of their religious beliefs, and thus bring themselves into formal harmony with the demands of the “ancient and hereditary Faith.” The same tendency, at once orthodox and unifying, is visible in the philosophic import attached, in accordance with the Stoic practice, to the popular names for the god in his various functions. In other tracts and essays the same aim is conspicuous, the same method of treatment is applied. In his fascinating account of the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris—which will be dealt with later from the material which it furnishes for investigating Plutarch’s attempts to identify foreign gods with the gods of Greece—he uses both these divine names as a means of approach to the Divine Nature, that One Eternal, Absolute Being, which is the real object of the philosopher’s clarified insight—πολλῶν ὀνομάτων μορφὴ μία.[185] The true object of the service of Isis, for example, is “the knowledge of that First and Supreme Power which is compact of Intelligence; that Power whom the goddess (Isis) bids her servants seek, since He abides by her side and is united with her. The very name of her temple expressly promises the knowledge and the understanding of _Being_, inasmuch as it is called the Ision (εἰς—ἰὼν), indicating that we shall know _Being_ if we _enter_ with piety and intelligence into the sacred rites of the goddess.”[186] The passage just quoted shows the intimate connexion between _Being_ and _Intelligence_—the “Supreme Power is compact of Intelligence;” and we are left in little doubt respecting Plutarch’s views on this second aspect of the Divine Nature. The conception of the Deity as νοῦς, an ancient abstraction in Greek philosophy, is at once strengthened and brought nearer to the intelligence of humanity by Plutarch’s simple treatment of it, and by his connecting it, wherever possible, with the traditions of the popular creed. God is not only Intelligence, but intelligent. “The Divine Nature,” says he, “is not blessed in the possession of silver and gold, nor mighty through the wielding of thunders and thunderbolts, but in the enjoyment of knowledge and understanding; and of all the things that Homer has said concerning the gods, this is his finest pronouncement:— ‘Yet both one goddess formed And one soil bred, but Jupiter precedence took in birth _And had more knowledge_’[187]