Such, then, is the relation in which the Dæmons stand to the Divine nature: they are made the scapegoat for everything obscene, cruel, selfish, traditionally imputed to the gods; and the Supreme Deity rises more conspicuously lofty for its freedom from everything that can tend to drag it down to the baseness of human passions. For Plutarch makes it very clear that it is the human element in these mixed natures that originates their disorderly appetites. Although the Dæmons “exceed mankind in strength and capacity, yet the divine element in their composition is not pure and unalloyed, inasmuch as it participates in the faculties of the soul and the sensations of the body, is liable to pleasure and pain, and to such other conditions as are involved in these vicissitudes of feeling, and bring disturbance upon all in a greater or less degree.”[269] It is by virtue of this participation in the “disturbing” elements of human nature that they are fitted to play that part between God and man which Plutarch, after Plato, calls the “interpretative” and the “communicative.”[270] This enables the Dæmons to play a loftier part than that hitherto assigned them; to respond, in fact, to that universal craving of humanity for some mediator between their weakness and the eternal splendour and perfection of the Highest. The whole question of inspiration and revelation, both oracular and personal, is bound up with the Dæmonic function, and to both these spheres of its operation, the public and the private, Plutarch gives the fullest and most earnest consideration. Previous, therefore, to discussing this aspect of the Dæmonic character and influence, it will be necessary to ascertain what were Plutarch’s views on the subject of inspiration and prophecy, and what was his attitude to that question of Divination which exercised so great a fascination on the mind of antiquity. CHAPTER VII. _Necessity for a Mediator between God and Man partly met by Oracular Inspiration—General failure of Oracles in the age of Plutarch—Plutarch’s “Delphian Essays”—The DE PYTHIÆ ORACULIS: nature of Inspiration: oracles not verbally inspired—The DE DEFECTU ORACULORUM—Various explanations of Inspiration—Plutarch inclines to accept that which assumes an original Divine afflatus placed under the superintendence of Dæmons, whose activities are subject to the operation of natural causes._