582 Socrates^ Schleiermacher^ and Delbrueck. stead of this, according to him, it has two significations, one, that which is divine in general, that is, the divine nature, the gods, or simply the deity ; the other, that which is divine, as the work or revelation of the gods. These two significa- tions, however, we are told are so closely allied, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish them, and in fact neither of them excludes the other, though it is sometimes one and sometimes the other that predominates. So far as we can find our way in this truly daemonian twilight, which Mr Ast has selected as the most proper medium for viewing this mys- terious subject, we feel inclined to suspect that he has seen an object double, which, upon closer inspection, will turn out to be simple, and that he has been deceived by an ap- pearance on the confines between adjective and substantive, which a little consideration will prove to be a nonentity. He concludes by asking, whether in the expression of the indict- ment, eTepa Kcavd SatiuovLa, the last word must not be taken substantively ? and observes, that the sense is required by the contrast between these Kaivd haifxovia and the gods of the state. In the mean while he has not produced a single other passage to justify the rendering, new deities, and the argument which he draws from the terms of the indictment is -very far from convincing. Since the gods of the state might have been described collectively as to Oelov, or to haiinoviov^ so as merely to express the supernatural or divine, abstracting from the distinction between a person or agent, and a thing, there seems to be no impropriety in opposing cTcpa Kaipci ^ai/JLOPia to them in an equally general sense. Schleiermacher, in a note to his translation of the Apology observes, that it appears from the Memorabilia i. 1.2. 3, that Socrates himself can never have considered that which, under the phrase to SaL^oviov, he described as his inward monitor, in the light of a specific supernatural being. For Xenophon there speaks of it as something resembling in kind the ordinary instruments of divination, as birds, voices, omens, sacrifices. And in this same passage he mentions his conjecture, that this was the origin of the charge brought against Socrates of religious innovation: Kal nxavTiKvi y^pcjoixevo^ ouk dcbavri's rj^' OLeTeOpvWrjTo ydp^ w^ (pairj ^coKpaTrj^^ to oai/uomov eavTw arjjuaipciV' oQev orj /cat fxaXiara ijloi cokovctii' avTov aiTidcraadai
