In the next place, with respect to irrational dæmons, it remains to investigate how they subsist. For if they derive their subsistence from the junior Gods, how, since these are the fathers of mortal natures, are these dæmons immortal? But if from the demiurgus how are they irrational? For he is the father of things in conjunction with intellect. This doubt is beautifully solved by Proclus as follows: irrational dæmons derive their subsistence from the junior Gods, yet are not on this account mortal, since of these Gods some generate others. And perhaps the generated Gods are called by Plato, in the Timæus, dæmons, because those that are truly dæmons are produced by the junior Gods. But they likewise proceed from the one demiurgus. For as Timæus says, he is the cause of all immortal natures. If, however, the demiurgus imparts intellect to all things, there is also in irrational dæmons an ultimate vestige of the intellectual peculiarity, so far as they have a facility of imagination; for this is the last echo as it were of intellect. And on this account the phantasy is not improperly called by others passive intellect. Lastly, after essential heroes, an order of souls follows, who proximately govern the affairs of men, and are dæmoniacal according to habitude or alliance, but not essentially. These souls likewise are the perpetual attendants of the Gods, but they have not an essence _wholly_ superior to man. Of this kind, as we are informed by Proclus in his MS. Scholia on the Cratylus, are the Nymphs that sympathize with waters, Pans with the feet of goats and the like. They also differ from those powers that are essentially of a dæmoniacal characteristic in this, that they assume a variety of shapes (each of the others immutably preserving one form) are subject to various passions, and are the causes of every kind of deception to mankind. Proclus likewise observes, that the Minerva which so often appeared to Ulysses and Telemachus belonged to this order of souls. CHAPTER XLVI.