principles, combining creative Reason with created Matter, freed us from fear of criticism either on the ground of impiety or unreason. For we deprive prophetic inspiration neither of God nor of Reason when we allow as its material the human soul, and assign as its instrument the inspiring exhalation.[305] The Earth, indeed, breeds these exhalations, but he that implants in the earth its tempering and transforming power—I mean the Sun—is regarded as a god in our ancestral religion. Then, if we leave the Dæmons as presidents and attendants and guardians, to secure the due harmonizing of the various elements of the inspiring exhalation, now slackening and now tightening it, now restraining its excessive power of phrensy and confusion, and gently tempering its stimulating force so that it becomes harmless and painless to those under its influence—if we adopt these views, we shall be in perfect harmony with reason and possibility.”[306] The one thing that is conspicuously evident throughout these discussions on important questions of Religion is the earnest sincerity with which they are universally approached. We notice everywhere that combination of piety with philosophy, which is characteristic of Plutarch’s own genius, and which appears to be no less characteristic of the society in which he constantly moves. Even the Epicurean Boethus, an excellent man with his witty stories and courtly compliments, finds it somehow in his power to defend the dignity of the prophetic God against those who would “mix Him up with every piece of stone or brass,” while those who are most solicitously inclined to a pious reverence of the ancient faith—Serapion for a prominent example—never for long forget that spirit of critical detachment proper to the inquiring philosopher.[307] “There is no one here present,” says Heracleon,“who is profane and uninitiated, and holds views of the gods inconsistent with our own; but we must take care that we ourselves do not unconsciously admit absurd and far-reaching hypotheses in support of our arguments.”[308] But it is Plutarch himself who, shunning the “falsehood of extremes,” most conspicuously represents this spirit of compromise. It is Theon-Plutarch who finds a middle way between the views of Boethus and those of Serapion on the subject of prophecy, and it is Lamprias-Plutarch who, knowing that these things involve many contentions and are open to numerous contradictions, combines the belief in an original divine inspiration, with a recognition of the scientific importance of subsidiary causes, moving unchecked in the sphere of Nature. “The power of the exhalation which inspires the Pythia is in truth divine and dæmonic, but it is not exempt from the operation of causes that bring silence, age, decay and destruction on all that lives between the earth and moon.”[309] Plutarch here strikes with clear emphasis a note not out of harmony with the spirit of modern