superis immortalitatem, cum inferis passionem. Nam, proinde ut nos, pati possunt omnia animorum placamenta vel incitamenta : ut et ira incitentur, et misericordia flectantur, et donis invitentur, et precibus leniantur, et contumeliis exasperentur, et honoribus mulceantur, aliisque omnibus ad similem nobis modum varientur. Quippe, ut finem comprehendam, daemones sunt genere animalia, ingenio rationabilia, animo passiva, corpore aeria, tempore aeterna. These Daemons Apuleius distinguishes sharply,' as never having been incarnate, from the lower sort of DaemonsLemures, Lares, Larvae-spirits of deceased men. It is from the number of the Daemons who never were incarnate that the Guardian Spirit attached to each man at his birth comes. Ex hac sublimiori 2 daemonum copia Plato autumat, singulis hominibus in vita agenda testes et custodes singulos additos, qui nemini conspicui, semper adsint arbitri omnium non modo actorum, verum etiam cogitatorum. At ubi vita edita remeandum est, eundem illum, qui nobis praeditus fuit, raptare illico et trahere veluti custodiam suam ad judicium, atque illic in causa dicunda assistere si qua commentiatur, redarguere: si qua vera dicat, asseverare: prorsus illius testimonio ferri sententiam. Proinde vos omnes, qui hanc Platonis divinam sententiam, me interprete, auscultatis, ita animos vestros ad quaecunque vel agenda, vel meditanda formate, ut sciatis, nihil homini prae istis custodibus, nec intra animum, nec foris, esse secreti, quin omnia curiose ille participet, omnia visat, omnia intelligat, in ipsis penitissimis mentibus vice conscientiae deversetur.3 1 Maximus Tyrius, writing about the same time as Apuleius, o.c. p. 128. 2 o.c. p. 129. 3 "To a mind carefully formed upon the basis of its natural conscience," says Cardinal Newman (Grammar of Assent, ch. v.), "the world, both of nature and of man, does but give back a reflection of those truths about the One Living God which have been familiar to it from childhood. Good and evil meet us daily as we pass through life, and there are those who think it philosophical to act towards the manifestations of each with some sort of impartiality, as if evil had as much right to be there as good, or even better, as having more striking triumphs and a broader jurisdiction. And because the course of things is determined by fixed laws, they consider that those laws preclude the present agency of the Creator in the carrying out of particular issues. It is otherwise with the theology of the religious imagination. It has a living hold on truths which are really to be found in the world, though they are not upon the surface. It is able to pronounce by anticipation, what it takes a long argument to prove -that good is the rule, and evil the exception. It is able to assume that, uniform as are the laws of nature, they are consistent with a particular Providence. It interprets what it sees around it by this previous inward teaching, as the true key of that maze of vast complicated disorder; and thus it gains a more and more consistent and luminous Vision of God from the most unpromising materials. Thus conscience is a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator; and the firmest hold of theological truths is gained by habits of personal religion." has remarks to the same effect in his Dissertation (26) on the Saiμóviov of Socrates, which he describes as one of those ἀθάνατοι δεύτεροι who are posted between Gods and Men, in the space between Earth and Heaven—ἐν μεθορίῳ γῆς καὶ οὐρανοῦ τεταγμένοι — to be ministers of the Gods and guardians, Toтáτaι, of men. The number of these medi ators between Gods and Men is countless: he quotes Hesiod τρὶς γὰρ μύριοι εἰσὶν ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ Some of them heal our diseases, others give counsel in difficulties, others reveal things hidden, others help men at their work or attend them on their journeys; some are with men in the town, others with men in the country; some are near to give aid at sea, others on land; one is at home in Socrates, another in Plato, another in Pythagoras-eiλnxe δ ̓ ἄλλος ἄλλην ἑστίαν σώματος, ὁ μὲν Σωκράτην, ὁ δὲ Πλάτωνα . . . ὅσαι φύσεις ἀνδρῶν τοσαῦται καὶ δαιμόνων: and the unrighteous Soul is that which has no Guardian Daemon domestic within it—ἐὰν δέ που μοχθηρὰν δείξῃς ψυχήν, ἀνέστιος αὕτη καὶ ἀνεπιστάτητος. 2 The doctrine of the individual's Guardian Daemon, set forth in the Phaedo Myth and the Myth of Er, and corroborated from the personal experience of Socrates in the Apology, Republic, and Theages, seems, in the works of Apuleius and Maximus Tyrius just now quoted from, to amount very nearly to the identification of that Daemon with Moral Character or Conscience-an identification which, it is interesting to remember, was made even before Plato's time by Heraclitus, os ȧvОρóπ Saíμшv,—and meets us in the teaching of the Stoics, where, indeed, it seems to be only the legitimate consequence of the "naturalism" of the School, and does not surprise us, as it does in the teaching of Platonists: the following passage, for instance, in Arrian's Dissertationes (i. 14), giving the words of Epictetus, merely states the doctrine known to moral theology as that of the “authority of conscience": 10. et D. 235. This seems to have been the generally accepted view; but Servius on Virg. Aen. vi. 743, records another view-that every man at birth has assigned to him two genii, a good and a bad. 3 40 A. 4 496 C. 3 5 128 D ff. ἐπίτροπον ἑκάστῳ παρέστησεν ὁ Ζεὺς τὸν ἑκάστου δαίμονα, καὶ παρέδωκε φυλάσσειν αὐτὸν αὐτῷ, καὶ τοῦτον ἀκοίμητον καὶ ἀπαραλόγιστον. τίνι γὰρ ἄλλῳ κρείττονι καὶ ἐπιμελεστέρῳ φύλακι παραδέδωκεν ἡμῶν ἕκαστον; ὥσθ' ὅταν κλείσητε τὰς θύρας καὶ σκότον ἔνδον ποιήσητε, μέμνησθε μηδέποτε λέγειν ὅτι μόνοι ἐστέ. οὐδὲ ἐστέ· ἀλλ ̓ ὁ θεὸς ἔνδον ἐστὶ καὶ ὁ ὑμέτερος δαίμων ἐστί. To the same effect Marcus Aurelius (Comment. v. 27) says: συζῇ δὲ θεοῖς ὁ συνεχῶς δεικνὺς αὐτοῖς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ψυχὴν ἀρεσκομένην μὲν τοῖς ἀπονεμομένοις, ποιοῦσαν δὲ ὅσα βούλεται ὁ δαίμων ὃν ἑκάστῳ προστάτην καὶ ἡγεμόνα ὁ Ζεὺς ἔδωκεν, ἀπόσπασμα ἑαυτοῦ. οὗτος δέ ἐστιν ὁ ἑκάστου νοῦς καὶ λόγος. So much for the philosophical outcome of the doctrine of the δαίμων ἑκάστου—that part of the general doctrine of aerial Saíuoves which seems to have been more interesting than any other to Platonists and Stoics alike. But what, it may be asked, is the ultimate source of this belief in the δαίμων ἑκάστου out of which moral theology, by a rationalising process, has evolved “conscience,” or even "noumenal character.' » 1 I would suggest that, in order to approach the answer to this question, we first dismiss from our minds those aerial δαίμονες who never were incarnate (although it is to their order, according to Plato, that the Saíuoves attached to individuals belong), and think only of the Hesiodic δαίμονες, the Souls of dead men, inhabiting the Air. The notion of δαίμονες who never were incarnate is subsequent to that of those who are Souls of dead men inhabiting the air, and came in, we may take it, only after the theological doctrine of the transcendence of One Supreme God had established itself. That theological doctrine required mediators between God and men, beings through whom the creative and regulative functions of God are exerted, while He Himself remains from everlasting to everlasting unmoved; and it was only logical to conceive these beings as Powers of the Godhead anterior in time and dignity to the Souls of men. The primitive doctrine of δαίμονες, with which the later one has less connection than might at first sight appear, is that of the presence on, under, or near the Earth of the Souls of dead ancestors; and it is still a widely spread belief that the company of these Souls is being continually drawn upon 1 See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 317. No new Souls I have already to supply infants, as they are born, with Souls. come into being; old Souls are always used. adverted to this belief, and return to it here to suggest that it is the source of the doctrine of the δαίμων ἑκάστου οι Guardian Spirit of the individual. Every new person born is at once himself and some deceased ancestor. He is essentially double. "In the Niger Delta," says Mr. J. E. King,2 citing the authority of Miss Kingsley, "we are told that no one's soul remains long below. The soul's return to its own family is ensured by special ju-jus. shown a selection of members of the family. which first attracts its see! he knows his own pipe.'" As the new babies arrive, they are small articles belonging to deceased The child is identified by the article attention. 'Why, he's Uncle John; I would suggest that in " Uncle John " we have the source out of which the notion of the Guardian Genius, the μυσταγωγὸς τοῦ βίου, was evolved. The Jewish doctrine of Angels-on which the reader may consult the Jewish Encyclopaedia, article " Angelology "bears considerable resemblance to the Greek doctrine of Saíuoves as divine beings (not Souls of deceased men) intermediate between God and men. Philo indeed goes the length of identifying the Jewish Angels with the Saíuoves of the Greek philosophers.5 The Jewish, like the parallel Greek doctrine, seems to have been largely consequential on the doctrine of the transcendence of One Supreme God." 1 See supra, pp. 198 ff. and pp. 302 ff. 2"Infant Burial," Classical Rev. Feb. 1903. Mr. King's reference is to Miss Kingsley's Travels in West Africa, p. 493. * Cf. Olympiodorus on Phaedo 70 c—ὅτι τὸ ζῶον καὶ τὸ τεθνεὼς ἐξ ἀλλήλων κατασκευάζει ἐκ τῆς μαρτυρίας τῶν παλαιῶν ποιητῶν τῶν ἀπὸ Ορφέως, φημί, λέγοντος οἱ δ ̓ αὐτοὶ πατέρες τε καὶ υἱέες ἐν μεγάροισιν ἠδ ̓ ἄλοχοι σεμναὶ κεδναί τε θύγατρες πανταχοῦ γὰρ ὁ Πλάτων παρῳδεῖ τὰ τοῦ Ὀρφέως. Quorum," adds Lobeck (Aglaoph. p. 797), "haec sententia esse videtur: animis in corpora remigrantibus saepe fit, ut qui olim naturae et affinitatis vinculis conjuncti fuerant, postea aliquando in eandem domum recolligantur ad pristinam conditionem revoluti." 4 ἅπαντι δαίμων ἀνδρὶ συμπαραστατεί εὐθὺς γενομένῳ μυσταγωγὸς τοῦ βίου.-ΜENANDER. 5 De Somniis, i. 22; and also calls them Xóyoɩ (o.c. i. 12-19). 6 See Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, pp. 246, 247: idéai, Xóyoi, daíuoves, ayyeλo, are conceptions which easily pass into one another-a philosophical basis, he argues, for the theory of a transcendent God was afforded by the Platonic ιδέαι and the Stoical λόγοι. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON MYTHS WHICH SET FORTH THE NATION'S, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE INDIVIDUAL'S, IDEALS AND CATEGORIES HITHERTO We have seen the Individual's Ideals and Categories set forth in Myth. Let us now conclude our review of the Platonic Myths by looking at two, in one of which-the Atlantis Myth1-we have a Nation's Ideal set forth-we assist at the spectacle of a Nation led on by a Vision of its Future; while in the other-the Myth of the Earth-Born, the Foundation-myth of the xaλλiπoλis 2 — we have a Nation's Categories deduced—the life of the "social organism' is exhibited as conditioned by its Past, as determined a priori by certain deep-cut characteristics. " The Atlantis Myth is introduced in the Timaeus as necessary to complete the ideal of the xaλλíπоλs, or Perfect State, presented in the Republic. The Timaeus, we must remember, stands in very close artistic and philosophic connection with the Republic, and begins with a recapitulation of the first five books of the Republic. Having recapitulated, Socrates says that he wishes now to see the Constitution of their yesterday's conversation exhibited in action; and it is to meet this wish that Critias tells the story of Atlantismerely summarised in the Timaeus, but afterwards begun on full scale in the Critias, unfortunately a fragment. There are two chief points to be noticed about the following on of the Atlantis Myth to complete the Republic :— (1) It is an imaginary Athens in the Atlantis Myth, which is the axious of the Republic in action. Much has been 1 Timaeus, 19 ff. (where it is sketched), and Critias (where it is begun on a large scale, but not finished). 2 Republic, 414 B. |