An age which attempts to reinvigorate its own ethical life by draughts of inspiration from springs hallowed by their duration from an immemorial antiquity, will naturally regret that currents, which once ran full, now flow no longer in their early strength, but have dwindled to insignificant rills, or are dried up altogether in their courses. And there is no source of religious inspiration so greatly held in honour as that which comes from the communication of mankind with the Divine Being.[271] Visions, dreams, incantations, inspired writings, omens, and prophecies have been valued as means of bringing man into communication with God, and as furnishing an unerring way of indicating the Divine will to humanity. But it would be difficult to mention any institution or practice having this ostensible aim which has had such absolute sway over the minds of those who came within reach of its influence, as the group of oracles which were celebrated in the ancient Hellenic world. It is no wonder, therefore, that in the age of Plutarch the present silence of the oracles was a common topic of speculation, of anxious alarm to the pious, of ribald sarcasm to the profane. Juvenal[272] satirically describes the meaner methods which the cessation of the Oracle at Delphi has imposed upon those who yet wish to peer through the gloom that hides the future. Lucan laments the loss which his degenerate time suffers from this cause: “_non ullo secula dono Nostra carent majore Deum, quam Delphica sedes Quod siluit_;”[273] and speculates as to the probable reason for the failure of the ancient inspiration.[274] That Plutarch should have shown solicitude on this aspect of the ancient faith is natural, and one cannot but be grateful that the chances of time have preserved the exhaustive tracts in which he and his friends are represented as discussing various questions connected with the inspiration of the Delphic Oracle, and the manner in which this inspiration was conveyed to humanity. No extant work gives us so intelligible and natural an explanation of the significance which oracular institutions possessed for the ancient world, nor so close an insight into the workings of the minds of educated men at one of the most important periods of human history, in face of one of the most interesting and, perhaps, most appalling of human problems. We have already made copious quotations from the two tracts in question; we now propose to use them mainly for the light which they cast on the question of oracular inspiration. We refer to the tracts known as the “De Pythiæ Oraculis” and the “De Defectu Oraculorum.” These two tracts (together with the one entitled the “De Ε apud Delphos”)[275] purport to be reports of conversations held by philosophical friends and acquaintances of Plutarch at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi.