Part 11 (1/2)

To Plutarch, theology is the crown of all philosophy.(2194) To form true and worthy conceptions of the Divine Being is not less important than to pay Him pious wors.h.i.+p. Plutarch's lofty conception of the Infinite and Supreme, like that of Maximus of Tyre, dominates all his system. In a curious treatise on Isis and Osiris, he reviews many a device of scholastic subtlety, many a crude guess of embryonic science, many a dream of Pythagorean mysticism, to find an inner meaning in the Egyptian myth.

Yet it embalms, in all this frigid scholasticism, the highest and purest expression of Plutarch's idea of the Supreme. In the end he breaks away from all lower mundane conceptions of the Divine, and reveals a glimpse of the beatific vision. ”While we are here below,” he says, ”enc.u.mbered by bodily affections, we can have no intercourse with G.o.d, save as in philosophic thought we may faintly touch Him, as in a dream. But when our souls are released, and have pa.s.sed into the region of the pure, invisible, and changeless, this G.o.d will be their guide and king who depend on Him and gaze with insatiable longing on the beauty which may not be spoken of by the lips of man.”(2195) To Plutarch G.o.d is the One, Supreme, Eternal Being, removed to an infinite distance from the mutable and mortal-the Being of whom we can only predicate that ”He is,” who lives in an everlasting ”now,” of whom it would be irrational and impious to speak in the terms of the future or the past.(2196) He is the One, the Absolute of Eleatic or Pythagorean philosophy, the Demiurgus of Plato, the primal motive power of Aristotle, the World-Soul of the Stoics. Yet Plutarch is as far removed from the Epicureanism which banishes G.o.d from the universe as he is from the pantheism of east or west, which interfuses the world and G.o.d.(2197) Plutarch never abandons the Divine personality, in whatever sense he may hold it. G.o.d is the highest perfection of goodness and intelligence, the Creator, the watchful and benevolent Providence of the world, the Author of all good. His power, indeed, is not unlimited. There is a power of evil in the world which must be recognised.

And, as good cannot be the author of evil, the origin of evil must be sought in a separate and original principle, distinct from, but not co-equal with, G.o.d: a principle recognised in many a theology and philosophy of east and west, and called by many names-Ahriman or Hades, the ”dyad” of Pythagoras, the ”strife” of Empedocles, the ”other” of Plato.(2198) Its seat is the World-Soul, which has a place alongside of G.o.d and Matter, causing all that is deadly in nature, all moral disorder in the soul of man. Matter is the seat both of evil and good.(2199) In its lower regions it may seem to be wholly mastered by the evil principle; yet in its essence it is really struggling towards the good, and, as a female principle, susceptible to the formative influence of the Divine, as well as exposed to the incursions of evil. Plutarch's theory of creation is, in the main, that of the Timaeus, with mingled elements of Stoic cosmogony.

Through number and harmony the Divine Mind introduces order into the ma.s.s of lawless chaos. But while G.o.d stands outside the cosmos as its creator, He is not merely the divine craftsman, but a penetrating power. For from Him proceeds the soul which is interfused with the world and which sustains it. Through the World-Soul, G.o.d is in touch with all powers and provinces of the universe. Yet throughout the universe, as in the human soul, there are always present the two elements side by side, the principles of reason and unreason, of evil and of good.(2200)

The vision of the one eternal, pa.s.sionless Spirit, far removed from the world of chance and change and earthly soilure, was the conquest of Greek philosophy, travailing for 800 years. But it was a vision far withdrawn; it was separated by an apparently impa.s.sable gulf alike from the dreams of h.e.l.lenic legend and from the struggling life of humanity. The poets, and even the poet of divinest inspiration, had bequeathed a ma.s.s of legend, often shocking to the later moral sense, yet always seductive by its imaginative charm. How to reconcile the fictions of poetry, which had so long enthralled all imaginations, with higher spiritual intuitions, that was the problem. It was not indeed a new problem. It had driven Xenophanes into open revolt, it had exercised the mind of the reverent Pindar and the sceptical Euripides. It had suggested to Plato the necessity of recasting myth in the light of the Divine purity.(2201) But the new h.e.l.lenism of the second century was a great literary, even more than a theological or philosophic, movement; and the glory of Greek literature was inseparably linked with the glory and the shame of Greek mythology. To discard and repudiate the myths was to give the lie to the divine poets. To explain them away by physical allegory, in the fas.h.i.+on of the Stoic theology, or to lower the ”blessed ones” of Olympus to the stature of earthly kings and warriors, after the manner of Euhemerus, was to break the charm of poetic legend, and violate the instincts of ancestral piety.(2202) And there were many other claimants for devotion beside the ancient G.o.ds of Rome and Greece. Persia and Phrygia, Commagene and Egypt, every region from the Sahara to c.u.mberland, were adding to the pantheon. Soldiers and travellers were bringing their tales of genii and daemons from islands in the British seas and the sh.o.r.es of the Indian Ocean.(2203) How could a man trained in the mystic monotheism of 800 years reconcile himself to this immense accretion of alien superst.i.tion?

On the other hand, from whatever quarter, a new spiritual vision had opened, strange to the ancient world. It is not merely that the conception of G.o.d has become more pure and lofty; the whole att.i.tude of the higher minds to the Eternal had altered. A great spiritual revolution had concurred with a great political revolution. The vision of the divine world which satisfied men in the age of Pericles or in the Punic wars, when religion, politics, and morality were linked in unbroken harmony, when, if spiritual vision was bounded, spiritual needs were less clamorous, and the moral life less troubled and self-conscious, could no longer appease the yearnings of the higher minds. Both morality and religion had become less formal and external, more penetrating and exigent. Prayer was no longer a formal litany for worldly blessings or sinful indulgence, but a colloquy with G.o.d, in a moment of spiritual exaltation.(2204) The true sacrifice was no longer ”the blood of bulls,”

but a quiet spirit. Along with a sense of frailty and bewilderment, men felt the need of purification and spiritual support. The old mysteries and the new cults from the East had fostered a longing for sacramental peace and a.s.surance of another life, in which the crooked should be made straight and the perverted be restored.

In Maximus of Tyre,(2205) although he has no claim to the reputation of a strong and original thinker, we see this new religious spirit of the second century perhaps in its purest form. Man is an enigma, a contradiction, a being placed on the confines of two worlds. A beast in his fleshly nature, he is akin to G.o.d in his higher part, nay, the son of G.o.d.(2206) Even the n.o.blest spirits here below live in a sort of twilight, or in a heady excitement, an intoxication of the senses. Yet, cramped as it is in the prison of the flesh, the soul may raise itself above the misty region of perpetual change towards the light of the Eternal. For, in the slumber of this mortal life, the pure spirit is sometimes visited by visions coming through the gate of horn,(2207) visions of another world seen in some former time. And, following them, the moral hero, like Heracles, the model of strenuous virtue, through toil and tribulation may gain the crown. On this stormy sea of time, philosophy gives us the veil of Leucothea to charm the troubled waters. It is true that only when release comes at death, does the soul attain to the full vision of G.o.d.

For the Highest is separated from us by a great gulf. Yet the a.n.a.lysis of the soul which Maximus partly borrows from Aristotle, discovers His seat in us, the highest reason, that power of intuitive, all-embracing, instantaneous vision, which is distinct from the slower and tentative operations of the understanding. It is by this higher faculty that G.o.d is seen, so far as He may be, in this mixed and imperfect state.(2208) For the vision of G.o.d can only in any degree be won by abstraction from sense and pa.s.sion and everything earthly, in a struggle ever upwards, beyond the paths of the heavenly orbs, to the region of eternal calm ”where falls not rain or hail or any snow, but a white cloudless radiance spreads over all.”(2209) And when may we see G.o.d? ”Thou shalt see Him fully,” Maximus says, ”only when He calls thee, in age or death, but meantime glimpses of the Beauty which eye hath not seen nor can tongue speak of, may be won, if the veils and wrappings which hide His splendour be torn away.(2210) But do not thou profane Him by offering vain prayers for earthly things which belong to the world of chance or which may be obtained by human effort, things for which the worthy need not pray, and which the unworthy will not obtain. The only prayer which is answered, is the prayer for goodness, peace, and hope in death.”(2211)

How could a Platonist of the second century, we may ask, holding such a spiritual creed, reconcile himself to Greek mythology, nay, to all the mythologies, with all the selfish grossness of their ritual? Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre answer the question by a piously ingenious interpretation of ancient legend, and partly by a system of daemons, of mediating and ministering spirits, who fill the interval between the changeless Infinite and the region of sin and change.

In religion, they say, in effect, we must take human nature as we find it.

We are not legislating for a young race, just springing from the earth, but for races with conceptions of the Divine which run back through countless ages. There may be, here and there, an elect few who can raise their minds, in rare moments, to the pure vision of the Eternal. But heaven is so far from earth, and earth is so darkened by the mists of sense, that temple and image and sacred litany, and the myths created by the genius of poets, or imposed by lawgivers, are needed to sustain and give expression to the vague impotent yearnings of the ma.s.s of men.(2212) The higher intuitions of religion must be translated into material symbolism; ”here we see, as through a gla.s.s darkly.” And the symbols of sacred truth are as various as the many tribes of men. Some, like the Egyptian wors.h.i.+p of animals, are of a degraded type. The Greek anthropomorphism, although falling far short of the grandeur and purity of the Infinite, yet furnishes its n.o.blest image, because it has glorified by artistic genius the human body, which has been chosen as the earthly home of the rational soul.(2213) And the cause of myth and plastic art are really one; nay, there is no opposition or contrast, in fact, between poetic mythology and religious philosophy. They are different methods of teaching religious truth, adapted to different stages of intellectual development. Myth is the poetic philosophy of a simple age, for whose ears the mystic truth must be sweetened by music, an age whose eyes cannot bear to gaze on the Divine splendour unveiled.(2214) Philosophic theology is for an age of rationalism and inquiry; it would have been unintelligible to the simple imaginative childhood of the race. Maximus has the same faith as Plutarch that the mythopoeic age possessed, along with an enthralling artistic skill, all the speculative depth and subtlety of later ages. It is almost a profanity to imagine that Homer or Hesiod or Pindar were less of philosophers than Aristotle or Chrysippus.(2215) It was a.s.sumed that the early myth-makers and lawgivers possessed a sacred lore of immense value and undoubted truth, which they dimly shadowed forth in symbolism of fanciful tale or allegory.(2216) The myth at once hides and reveals the mystery of the Divine. If a man comes to its interpretation with the proper discipline and ac.u.men, the kernel of spiritual or physical meaning which is reverently veiled from the profane eye will disclose itself. And thus the later philosophic theologian is not reading his own higher thoughts of G.o.d into the grotesque fancies of a remote antiquity; he is evolving and interpreting a wisdom more original than his own. In this process of rediscovering a lost tradition, he pushes aside the ma.s.s of erroneous interpretations which have perverted the original doctrine, by literal acceptance of what is really figurative, by abuse of names and neglect of realities, by stopping at the symbol instead of rising to the divine fact.(2217)

The treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris is the best ill.u.s.tration of this att.i.tude to myth. Plutarch's theology, though primarily h.e.l.lenic, does not confine its gaze to the Greek Olympus; it is intended to be the science of human religion in general. It gives formal expression to the growing tendency to syncretism. The central truth of it is, that as the sun and moon, under many different names, shed their light on all, so the G.o.ds are variously invoked and honoured by various tribes of men.(2218) But there is one supreme Ruler and Providence common to all. And the lower deities of different countries may often be identified by the theologian, under all varieties of t.i.tle and attribute. So, to Plutarch as to Herodotus, the immemorial wors.h.i.+ps of Egypt were the prototypes or the counterparts of the cults of Greece.(2219) There was a temple of Osiris at Delphi, and Clea, to whom Plutarch's treatise is addressed, was not only a hereditary priestess of the Egyptian G.o.d, but held a leading place among the female ministers of Dionysus.(2220) It was fitting that a person so catholic in her sympathies should have dedicated to her the treatise in which Plutarch expounds his all-embracing theology.

In this treatise we see the new theology wrestling in a hopeless struggle to unite the thought of Pythagoras and Plato with the grossness of Egyptian myth. It is a striking, but not a solitary, example of the misapplication of dialectic skill and learning, to find the thoughts of the present in the fancies of the past, and from a mistaken piety, to ignore the onward march of humanity. Arbitrary interpretations of myth, alike unhistorical and unscientific, make us wonder how they could ever have occurred to men of intellect and learning. Yet the explanation is not far to seek. More elevated conceptions of G.o.d, the purged and clarified religious intuition, do not readily find a subst.i.tute for the old symbolism to express their visions. Religion, beyond any other inst.i.tution, depends for its power on antiquity, on the charm of ancestral pieties. A religious symbol is doubly sacred when it has ministered to the devotion of many generations.

In interpreting the powerful cult of Isis, which was spreading rapidly over the western world, Plutarch had two objects in view. By reverent explanation of its legends and ritual, he desired to counteract its immoral and superst.i.tious tendencies;(2221) he also wished, in discussing a wors.h.i.+p so multiform as that of Isis, to develop his att.i.tude to myth in general. We cannot follow him minutely in his survey of the various attempts of philosophy to find the basis of truth in Egyptian legend. Some of these explanations, such as the Euhemerist, he would dismiss at once as atheistic.(2222) On others, which founded themselves on physical allegory, he would not be so dogmatic, although he might reject as impious any tendency to identify the G.o.ds with natural powers and products.(2223) As a positive contribution to religious philosophy, the treatise is chiefly valuable for its theory of Evil and of daemonic powers, and above all for the doctrine of the unity of G.o.d, the central truth of all religions.

The daemonology of the Platonists of the second century had its roots deep in the h.e.l.lenic past, as it was destined to have a long future. But it was specially evoked by the needs of the pagan revival of the Antonine age.

The doctrine had a.s.sumed many forms in previous Greek thought from the days of Hesiod, and it has various aspects, and serves various purposes, in the hands of Plutarch, Apuleius, and Maximus of Tyre. It was in the first place an apologetic for heathenism in an age distracted between a lofty conception of one infinite Father and legends of many lands and many ages, which were consecrated by long tradition, yet often shocking to the spiritual sense. As the conception of G.o.d became purer and seemed to withdraw into remoter distances, souls like Apuleius, wedded to the ancient rites, found in the daemons, ranging between earth and ether, the means of conveying answers to prayer, of inspiring dreams and prophecy, of ordering all the machinery of divination.(2224) To others, such as Maximus of Tyre, the doctrine seemed to discover a spiritual support for human frailty, guardians in temptation and the crises of life, mediators between the human spirit, immured for a time in the prison of the flesh, and the remote purity of the Supreme.(2225) To other minds the daemon is no external power, but dwelling within each soul, as its divine part, a kind of ideal personality,(2226) in following whose ghostly promptings lies the secret of happiness. Finally, the doctrine created an eschatology by which vistas of moral perfection were opened before purer spirits in worlds to come, and the infinite responsibilities of this life were terribly enforced by threats of endless degradation.(2227)

The daemons who came to the aid of mythology in the Antonine age, were composite beings, with a double nature corresponding to the two worlds of the Divine and human which they linked together. They are at once divine in power and knowledge, and akin to humanity in feeling and pa.s.sion.(2228) They are even liable to mortality, as was proved by the famous tale of the voice which floated to the Egyptian pilot from the Echinad isles, announcing that the great Pan was dead.(2229) Their sphere is the middle s.p.a.ce between the lofty ether and the mists of earth. This spiritual mediation, as Maximus points out, is not an exceptional principle. There is a chain of being in the universe, as it had been developed in the cosmic theory of Aristotle, by which the remote extremes are linked in successive stages, and may be blended or reconciled, in a mean or compound, as in a musical harmony. The principle is seen operating in the relation of the great physical elements. Thus, for example, fire and water are at opposite poles: they cannot pa.s.s immediately into one another, but air furnishes a medium between the two, and reconciles their opposition by partic.i.p.ating in the warmth of the one element and in the moisture of the other.(2230) The suggestions of cosmic theory seemed to receive support from many tales which, in that age of luxuriant superst.i.tion, were accepted even in educated circles. Travellers, returning from Britain, told weird stories of desolate islands in the northern seas which were the haunts of genii.(2231) A Spartan visitor to Delphi related how, on the sh.o.r.es of the Indian Ocean, he had met with a hermit of a beautiful countenance and proof against all disease, who spoke with many tongues, and derived his mystic powers from intercourse with the spirits which haunted those distant solitudes.(2232)

Plutarch also justifies his theory of daemons by an appeal to the authority of Hesiod, of Pythagoras and Plato, Xenocrates and Chrysippus.(2233) He might have added others to the list. For, indeed, the conception of these mediators between the ethereal world and the world of sense has a long history-too long to be developed within our present limits. Its earliest appearance in Greece was in the _Works and Days_ of Hesiod, who first definitely sketched a great scale of being-G.o.ds, heroes, daemons, and mortal men. Hesiod's daemons are the men of the golden age, translated to a blissful and immortal life, yet linked in sympathy with those still on earth-”Ministers of good and guardians of men.”(2234) The conception was introduced at a time when new moral and spiritual forces were at work, which were destined to have a profound and lasting influence on paganism for a thousand years. The glamour of the radiant Olympus and the glory of heroic battle were fading. Men were settling down to humdrum toil, and becoming acutely conscious of the troubles and sadness of life.

With a craving for support and comfort which the religion of Homer could not give, the pessimist view of life, which colours Hesiod's poetry, sought consolation in a mysticism altogether strange to Homer, and even to Hesiod. The feeling that humanity had declined from a glorious prime and, in its weakness and terror at death, needed some new consolations, was met by a system which, although Orpheus may never have existed, will always be called by his name.(2235) The Chthonian deities, Dionysus and Demeter, sprang into a prominence which they had not in Homer. The immortal life began to overshadow the present, and in the mysteries men found some a.s.surance of immortality, and preparation for it by cleansing from the stains of time. That idea, which was to have such profound influence upon later thought, that there is a divine element in man, which is emanc.i.p.ated from the prison of the flesh at death, became an accepted doctrine. At the same time, the faith in helpers and mediators, half human, half divine, lent itself to the support of human weakness. The heroic soul who pa.s.sed victoriously through the ordeal of this life, might in another world become the guardian and exemplar of those who were still on earth.

In the Ionian and Eleatic schools the doctrine was held in some sense by all the great thinkers, by Thales, Anaximander, Herac.l.i.tus, Xenophanes. To Thales the world was full of daemons.(2236) In the mystic teaching of Herac.l.i.tus the universe teems with such spirits, for in the perpetual flux and change, the divine is constantly pa.s.sing into the death of mortal life and the mortal into the divine.(2237) Empedocles, in conformity with his cosmic dualism, first made the distinction between good and bad daemons, and followed Pythagoras in connecting daemonic theory with the doctrine of a fall from divine estate, and long exile and incarnation in animal forms.(2238) It was in the dim system of Pythagoras that the doctrine became a really religious tenet, as it was to the Platonists of the Antonine age. Pythagoras was more priest and mystic than philosopher. He had far more in common with the Orphici, with Abaris and Epimenides, than with Thales or Anaximander. His school, for we can hardly speak of himself, connected the doctrine of daemons with the doctrines of metempsychosis and purification and atonement in another world. Souls released from the prison-house of the flesh are submitted to a purgatorial cleansing of a thousand years. Some pa.s.s the ordeal victoriously, and ascend to higher spheres. Others are kept in chains by the Erinnyes. The beatified souls become daemons or good spirits, ranging over the universe, and manifesting themselves in dreams and omens and ghostly monitions, sometimes becoming even visible to the eye.(2239) But their highest function is to guide men in the path of virtue during life, and after death to purify the disembodied spirit, which may become a daemon in its turn. This is the theory, which, with some modifications, was adopted by the later Platonists. It was popularised by Pindar, ”the Homer of the Pythagorean school.” He was captivated by its doctrine of the migrations of the soul, of its ordeal in a future life, and its chastis.e.m.e.nt or elevation to lofty spiritual rank as daemon or hero. In the second Olympian ode, the punishment of the wicked and the beat.i.tude of n.o.ble spirits, in the company of Peleus and Achilles in the happy isles, are painted in all the glowing imagery of the Apocalypse.(2240)

The daemonology of Pythagoras, along with the doctrine of metempsychosis in its moral aspect, was adopted by Plato, whether as a serious theory or as a philosophic myth. The chief pa.s.sages in Plato where the daemons are mentioned are suffused with such mythic colour that it would perhaps be rash to extract from them any sharp dogmatic theory.(2241) But Plato, holding firmly the remote purity of G.o.d, strove to fill the interval between the mortal and the Infinite by a graded scheme of superhuman beings. The daemon is a compound of the mortal and the divine, spanning the chasm between them. This is the power which conveys to G.o.d the prayers and sacrifices of men, and brings to men the commands and rewards of the G.o.ds, which operates in prophecy, sacrifice, and mystery. And again the daemon is a power which is a.s.signed to each soul at birth, and which at death conducts it to the eternal world, to receive judgment for its deeds, and perhaps to be condemned to return once more to earth. The reason in man, his truly divine part, is also called his daemon, his good genius. It is the power whose kindred is with the world of the unseen, which is immortal, and capable of a lofty destiny.

Like his master Plato, Maximus of Tyre seems to know nothing of the evil daemons, who, as we shall presently see, were used by Plutarch to account for the immorality of myth. To Maximus the daemons are rather angelic ministers, sent forth to advise and succour weak mortal men.(2242) They are the necessary mediators between the one Supreme and our frail mortal life. Dwelling in a region between earth and ether, they are of mingled mortal and divine nature, weaker than the G.o.ds, stronger than men, servants of G.o.d and overseers of men, by kins.h.i.+p with either linking the weakness of the mortal with the Divine. Great is the mult.i.tude of this heavenly host, interpreters between G.o.d and man: ”thrice ten thousand are they upon the fruitful earth, immortal, ministers of Zeus,” healers of the sick, revealers of what is dark, aiding the craftsman, companions of the wayfarer. On land and sea, in the city and the field, they are ever with us. They inspired a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Diogenes, or a Zeno; they are present in all human spirits. Only the lost and hopeless soul is without the guardians.h.i.+p of such an unearthly friend.

The earlier Platonist or Pythagorean daemonology was not employed to explain or rehabilitate polytheism. Although Plato would not banish myth from his Utopia, he placed his ban on the mythopoeic poets who had lent their authority to tales and crimes and pa.s.sions of the G.o.ds. Myth could only be tolerated in the education of the young if it conformed to the standard of Divine perfection.(2243) G.o.d cannot be the author of evil, evil is the offspring of matter; it is a limitation or an incident of the fleeting world of sense. It is only relative and transitory, and can never penetrate the realm of the ideal. But to Plutarch evil was an ultimate principle in the universe, ever present along with the good, although not perhaps of equal range and power.(2244) And Plutarch would not banish and disown the poets for attributing to the G.o.ds pa.s.sions and crimes which would have been dishonouring to humanity. He would not abandon the ancient ritual because it contained elements of gloom and impurity which shocked a refined moral sense. Mythology and ritual, as they had been moulded by poets or imposed by lawgivers, were intertwined with the whole life of the people and formed an essential element in the glory of h.e.l.lenic genius.

The piety and aesthetic feeling of the priest of Delphi still clung to ancient ritual and legend, even when the lofty morality of the Platonist was offended by the grossness which mingled with their artistic charm.

Might it not be possible to moralise the pagan system without discrediting its authors, to reconcile the claims of reason and conservative religious feeling? Might it not be possible to save at once the purity and majesty of G.o.d and the inspiration of the poets?

To Plutarch the doctrine of daemons seemed to furnish an answer to this question; it also satisfied other spiritual cravings which were equally urgent. The need of some mixed nature to mediate between the ethereal world and the region of sense became all the more imperious as the philosophic conception of G.o.d receded into a more remote and majestic purity. The gradation of spiritual powers, which had been accepted by so many great minds from the time of Hesiod, at once guarded the aloofness of the Supreme and satisfied the craving of the religious instinct for some means of contact with it, for divine help in the trials of time. These mediating spirits were also made in Plutarch's theology to furnish an explanation of oracles and all forms of prophecy, of the inspired enthusiasm of artist, sage, and poet. Finally, the theory, with the aid of mythic fancy, cast a light on the fate of souls beyond the grave, and vindicated the Divine justice by a vision of a judgment to come.

Plutarch's daemonology, as he admits himself, is an inheritance from the past. The daemons are beings half divine, half human; they are G.o.dlike in power and intelligence, they are human in liability to the pa.s.sions engendered by the flesh. This host of spirits dwell in the borderland below the moon, between the pure changeless region of the celestial powers and the region of the mutable and the mortal. Linking the two worlds together by their composite nature, the daemons differ in degrees of virtue; some are more akin to the Divine perfection, others more tainted by the evil of the lower world.(2245) The good spirits, as they are described by Maximus of Tyre, are true servants of G.o.d and faithful guardians of human virtue. But the bad daemons a.s.sume a special prominence in the theology of Plutarch. Nor was the development unnatural. His conception of immortality, and the necessity of purification in another world, raised the question as to the destiny of souls whose stains were indelible. If purified souls are charged as daemons with offices of mercy, may not the impure prolong their guilt in plaguing and corrupting mankind?