Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/162

 But whatever may have been the views explicitly maintained by Plutarch in this connexion, it is his constant practice to shift on to the shoulders of the Dæmons the responsibility for all those legends, ceremonies, and practices, which, however appropriate and necessary parts of the national faith they may be, are yet inconsistent with the qualities rightly attributable to Deity. We have already noticed his unwillingness to impugn the immutability of the Creator by regarding His essence as capable of metamorphosis into the phenomena of the created world. "It is," says Ammonius, "the function of some other god to do and suffer these changes—or, rather, of some Dæmon appointed to direct Nature in the processes of generation and destruction." This relationship of the Dæmons to the supreme power as conceived by philosophy is more completely stated in the short tract, "De Fato," where we are told that (1) there is a first and supreme Providence which is the intelligence of the First Deity, or,apud Delphos'', 394 A.]