idea of God. As God was withdrawn not only from participation in the ignoble adventures of the Homeric legends, but also from the direct inspiration of oracular and prophetic phrensy, His character would become more worthy of the adoration of the Best, while His omnipotence would be maintained by virtue of the controlling power exercised by Him over all subordinate powers. The gain for a philosophic conception of the Deity was so great in this direction, that we are without surprise in seeing Plutarch proceed still further on the same path. The Dæmons by their divine alloy come into close contact with the nature of God: they perform many functions as interpreters of the Divine Will to humanity. But by virtue of the human element in their character, they are fitted for assuming a personal relationship with individual men, and for becoming the instruments by means of which God enters into those ethical relations with humanity which we have seen described in the “De Sera Numinis Vindicta.” The hint for this aspect of their work and influence Plutarch has found in the Hesiodic people of the golden age, whose death promoted them to the duty of keeping watch over the actions of men. We have seen him already develop this hint in an assertion that the Dæmons, in addition to attending on shrines and religious ceremonies, are endowed with punitive authority over great sinners; and the ethical value of the doctrine is enforced in a passage in which the love of justice, the fear of dishonour, the adoration of virtue, the amenities and graces of civilized life, are intimately associated with the belief that good deities and Dæmons keep a watch upon our career.[313] This belief in an intimate personal relation between men and Dæmons received its most notorious expression in the famous philosophic tradition of the Dæmon of Socrates, and it is naturally in a tract with this title that we have the fullest information respecting Plutarch’s view of the personal connexion between Dæmons and men. The essay, “On the Dæmon of Socrates,” does not, however, contain an exhaustive and scientific discussion of this interesting aspect of Theology similar to that given by Apuleius in his tract with the same designation. At first we find ourselves plunged into the midst of a most dramatically told piece of history—the famous Return of the Theban Exiles under Pelopidas after the treacherous seizure of the Cadmea by the Spartans. In the pauses of the plot the Thebans—averse from such studies as their character is supposed to have been—discourse on these high questions of religious philosophy, and one would almost guess that Plutarch’s subsidiary intention was to indicate, by the broken character of the discussion, the difficulty of attaining to a complete and final view of the subject. Various rational and supernatural explanations of the well-known Socratic expression are suggested, explanations which vary in harmony with the different types of character,