Apuleius was a Platonist: only, for him, the Ideas of Plato were no creatures of logical abstraction, but in very truth informing souls, in every type and variety of sensible things.

Those noises in the house all supper-time, sounding through the tables and along the walls:--were they only startings in the old rafters, at the impact of the music and laughter; or rather importunities of the secondary selves, the true unseen selves, of the persons, nay! of the very things around, essaying to break through their frivolous, merely transitory surfaces, to remind one of abiding essentials beyond them, [88] which might have their say, their judgment to give, by and by, when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life's table would be over?
And was not this the true significance of the Platonic doctrine ?--a hierarchy of divine beings, associating themselves with particular things and places, for the purpose of mediating between God and man--man, who does but need due attention on his part to become aware of his celestial company, filling the air about him, thick as motes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympathetic intelligence he casts through it.
"Two kinds there are, of animated beings," he exclaimed: "Gods, entirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode, since one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision--those mysterious stars!--in the eternity of their existence, in the perfection of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: and men, dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, with infirm and mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain; taken altogether and in their whole species perhaps, eternal; but, severally, quitting the scene in irresistible succession.
"What then?
Has nature connected itself together by no bond, allowed itself to be thus crippled, and split into the divine and human elements?
And you will say to me: If so it be, that man is thus entirely exiled from the immortal gods, that all communication is denied [89] him, that not one of them occasionally visits us, as a shepherd his sheep--to whom shall I address my prayers?
Whom, shall I invoke as the helper of the unfortunate, the protector of the good?
"Well! there are certain divine powers of a middle nature, through whom our aspirations are conveyed to the gods, and theirs to us.

Passing between the inhabitants of earth and heaven, they carry from one to the other prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being a kind of interpreters.

This interval of the air is full of them! Through them, all revelations, miracles, magic processes, are effected.

For, specially appointed members of this order have their special provinces, with a ministry according to the disposition of each.