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The divine warning voice which Sokrates used to hear, is a salient example of the mental impressions leading to the belief in guardian spirits.[1] In the Roman world, the doctrine came to be accepted as a philosophy of human life. Each man had his 'genius natalis,' associated with him from birth to death, influencing his action and his fate, standing represented by its proper image as a lar among the household gods; and at weddings and joyous times, and especially on the anniversary of the birthday when genius and man began their united career, worship was paid with song and dance to the divine image, adorned with garlands, and propitiated with incense and libations of wine. The demon or genius was, as it were, the man's companion soul, a second spiritual ego. The Egyptian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the young Octavius, 'for thy demon,' said he, 'is in fear of his;' and truly in after years that genius of Augustus had become an imperial deity, by whom Romans swore solemn oaths, not to be broken.[2] The doctrine which could thus personify the character and fate of the individual man, proved capable of a yet further development. Converting into animistic entities the inmost operations of the human mind, a dualistic philosophy conceived as attached to every mortal a good and an evil genius, whose efforts through life drew him backward and forward toward virtue and vice, happiness and misery. It was the kakodaimōn of Brutus
1 Menander, 205, in Clement. Stromat.; Xenophon, Memor. Socr.; Plato, Apol. Socr. &c. See Plotin. Ennead. iii. 4; Porphyr. Plotin.
2 Paulus Diaconus: 'Genium appellant Deum, qui vim obtineret rerum omnium generandarum.' Censorin. de Die Natali, 3: 'Eundem esse genium et larem, multi veteres memoriæ prodiderunt.' Tibull. Eleg. i. 2, 7; Ovid. Trist. iii. 13, 18, v. 5, 10; Horat. Epist. ii. 1, 140, Od. iv. n, 7. Appian. de Bellis Parth. p. 156. Tertullian, Apol. xxiii.
