Dæmons, therefore, as Diotima also says, being many and all-various, the highest of them conjoin souls proceeding from their father to their leading Gods. For every God, as we have said, is the leader in the first place of dæmons, and in the next of partial souls. For the demiurgus disseminated these, as Timæus says, into the sun and moon, and the other instruments of time. These divine dæmons, therefore, are those which are essentially allotted to souls, and conjoin them to their proper leaders. And every soul, though it revolves together with its leading deity, requires a dæmon of this kind. But dæmons of the second rank preside over the ascensions and descensions of souls; and from these the souls of the multitude derive their elections. For the most perfect souls, who are conversant with generation in an undefiled manner, as they choose a life conformable to their presiding God, so they live according to a divine dæmon, who conjoined them to their proper deity when they dwelt on high. Hence, the Egyptian priest admired Plotinus, as being governed by a divine dæmon. To souls, therefore, who live as those that will shortly return to the intelligible world whence they came, the supernal is the same with the dæmon which attends them here. But to imperfect souls the essential is different from the dæmon that attends them at their birth. If these things then are rightly asserted, we must not assent to those who make our rational soul a dæmon. For a dæmon is different from man, as Diotima says, who places dæmons between Gods and men, and as Socrates also evinces, when he divides a dæmoniacal oppositely to the human nature. “For,” says he, “not a human but a dæmoniacal obstacle detains me.” But man is a soul using the body as an instrument. A dæmon, therefore, is not the same with the rational soul.