agreed, a philosophical school has
adopted and stubbornly held to the belief in the existence of gods though
this assumption was directly opposed to a fundamental proposition in its
system of doctrine. The case of Plato is particularly interesting because
he himself was aware and has pointed out that here was a point on which
the consistent scientific application of his conception of the universe
must fail. It is the outcome--one of many--of what is perhaps his finest
quality as a philosopher, namely, his intellectual honesty.

An indirect testimony to the correctness of the view here stated will be
found in the way in which Plato's faithful disciple Xenocrates developed
his theology, for it shows that Xenocrates presupposed the existence of
the gods of popular belief as given by Plato. Xenocrates made it his
general task to systematise Plato's philosophy (which had never been set
forth publicly by himself as a whole), and to secure it against attack. In
the course of this work he was bound to discover that the conception of
the gods of popular belief was a particularly weak point in Plato's
system, and he attempted to mend matters by a peculiar theory which became
of the greatest importance for later times. Xenocrates set up as gods, in
the first place, the heavenly bodies. Next he gave his highest principles
(pure abstracts such as oneness and twoness) and the elements of his
universe (air, water and earth) the names of some of the highest
divinities in popular belief (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Demeter). These gods,
however, did not enter into direct communication with men, but only
through some intermediate agent. The intermediate agents were the
"demons," a class of beings who were higher than man yet not perfect like
the gods. They were, it seems, immortal; they were invisible and far more
powerful than human beings; but they were subject to human passions and
were of highly differing grades of moral perfection. These are the beings
that are the objects of the greater part of the existing cult, especially
such usages as rest on the assumption that the gods can do harm and are
directed towards averting it, or which are in other ways objectionable;
and with them are connected the myths which Plato subjected to so severe a
criticism. Xenocrates found a basis for this system in Plato, who in the
_Symposium_ sets up the demons as a class of beings between gods and men,
and makes them carriers of the prayers and wishes of me