belief, in the opinion of Cleombrotus, furnishes an explanation of the silent periods of the oracles. "I am not afraid to say, as many others have said before me, that when the Dæmons who have been appointed to administer prophetic shrines and oracles leave them finally, then the shrines and oracles finally decline. If these guardians flee and go elsewhither, and then return after a long interval, the oracles, silent during their absence, become again, as of old, the means of conveying responses to those who come to consult them." "But," says Demetrius, "it is impossible to assert that the oracles are silent owing to their desertion by the Dæmons, unless we are first reassured respecting the method by which the Dæmons, when in actual superintendence of the oracles, make them actively inspired."[1] Plutarch here introduces a rationalistic argument imputing prophetic inspiration to subterrestrial exhalations, and draws down upon himself the reproof from Ammonius that he has followed up the abstraction of Divination from the gods by now depriving the Dæmons of that power and referring it to "exhalations, winds, and vapours." Plutarch, however, though adhering to Rationalism to the extent of insisting on the operation of secondary causes, saves his piety by explicitly placing them under the superintendence of the Dæmons. "There are two causes of generation: the Zeus of the ancient poets and theologians, and the physical causes of the natural philosophers. The study of either of these sets of causes, to the exclusion
- ↑ 431 B.
