Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/151

 The difficulty of reconciling Polytheism with philosophic Monotheism was, of course, not new. In earlier days it had been necessary for philosophers to secure their monotheistic speculations from the charge of Atheism by finding in their systems a dignified position for the popular gods. And even those philosophers who sincerely believed in the existence of beings corresponding to the popular conceptions felt the need of accounting, in some more or less specious way, for the ill deeds that were traditionally attributed to so many of them. The ancient doctrine of Dæmons, emanating from some obscure source in Antiquity, had been*