that Plutarch thinks he has found in the existence of Dæmons not only a means of communication between God and man, but a means of reconciliation between Philosophy and Piety, between Boethus and Serapion. It is a very happy circumstance for a man's moral progress when he finds Religion and Reason in an agreement so plausible; and when Reason has in some way furnished the very means of agreement—for was it not Plato himself to whom most people had gone for their Dæmonology?—the resulting tendency will have the strength of two harmonizing influences, instead of the halting weakness of a compromise between two mutually conflicting elements.[1] Plato's Dæmonology is a trick of fence: an ironical pose of sympathetic
- [Footnote: the text—incomplete as it may be in other respects—has at least
made sufficiently clear. It is, however, gratifying to find that this American translator, unlike Dr. Super, of Chicago, recognizes that Plutarch "was certainly a monotheist."]
- ↑ Plutarch found the existence of the Dæmons recognized in each of the three spheres which contributed to the formation of religious beliefs—in philosophy, in popular tradition, and in law. Stobæus: Tit. 44, 20 ("On Laws and Customs"—Tauchnitz edition of 1838, vol. ii. p. 164) has an interesting quotation, headed "Preamble of the Laws of Zaleucus," in which the following passage occurs:—"If an Evil Dæmon come to any man, tempting him to Vice, let him spend his time near temples, and altars, and sacred shrines, fleeing from Vice as from an impious and cruel mistress, and let him pray the gods to deliver him from her power." Zaleucus may, of course, have been embodying the teaching of his Pythagorean colleagues, but the fact remains that the belief in the influence of Dæmons on human life received the authority of a celebrated system of law, unless we are to be more incredulous than Cicero himself—Quis Zaleucum leges scripsisse non dixit? (Ad Atticum, vi. 1).—("His code is stated to have been the first collection of written laws that the Greeks possessed."—Smaller Classical Dictionary, Smith and Marindin, 1898.)
