In this defence of the Deity Theon has apparently committed himself to a view of the manner in which the process of inspiration takes place. “The body employs many organs, while the soul employs the body and its parts. The soul, in like manner, is God’s instrument. Now the virtue of an instrument consists in imitating, subject to its natural limitations, the power that makes use of it, and in exhibiting the thought of that power in operation. This it cannot do to the extent of reproducing the purity and perfection of the Divine Creator, but its work is mixed with alien matter. The Moon reproduces the splendour of the Sun, but in a dim and weak form. These images are representations of the way in which the Pythia reproduces for the service of mankind the thoughts of God.”[290] We may be tempted, while reading this explanation, to assert that Plutarch wishes to maintain that the inspiration of the Pythia by the Deity is direct. But these illustrations are intended only to explain why the Pythian verses are not divinely perfect. They come through a human soul, which has the weakness of an instrument, and is prevented by its limitations from expressing the purity and beauty of the divine thought. The manner of this inspiration is more fully discussed in the following dialogue, the “De Defectu Oraculorum.” This tract is in the form of a letter addressed to Terentius Priscus, and although the person speaking as “I” in the dialogue is alluded to as “Lamprias”[291] by the other speakers, it is clearly Plutarch himself who is modestly represented under this guise. After a warning, characteristic of Plutarch both as regards its purport and the manner in which it is conveyed (by means of a historical reminiscence), that these questions are not to be tested “like a painting by the touch,” the writer brings a party of philosophers together at Delphi “shortly before the Pythian games held under Callistratus.” Two of these philosophers are already known to us. Like the eagles or swans of the ancient legend they had met at Delphi coming from opposite quarters of the globe;[292] Demetrius, of Tarsus, returning home from Britain, and Cleombrotus, of Lacedæmon, from prolonged journeyings by land and sea, in Egypt and the East. Cleombrotus, being possessed of a competence, employed his means and his leisure in travel, for the purpose of accumulating evidence to form the basis of that branch of philosophy whose end and aim, as he expressed it, was Theology.[293] A preliminary discussion takes place respecting the “everlasting lamp” which Cleombrotus had been shown in the Temple of Ammon, a discussion involving abstract consideration of Mathematics and Astronomy. In this conversation, Plutarch’s three favourite characters, doubtlessly representing three common types of the day, are again depicted in the pious belief of Cleombrotus, the scepticism of Demetrius, and the judicial pose of the Academic Ammonius.