CHAP. VII.
It is not, however, sufficient to learn these things alone, nor will he who only knows these become perfect in divine science. But it is requisite also to know what enthusiasm is, and how it is produced. It is falsely, therefore, supposed to be a motion of dianoia, in conjunction with dæmoniacal inspiration. For human dianoia is not moved, if it is thus enthusiastically affected; nor is the inspiration produced by dæmons, but by the Gods. Neither is enthusiasm simply an ecstasy; for it is a reelevation and transition to a more excellent condition of being. But delirium and ecstasy evince a perversion to that which is worse. Hence, he who is an advocate for the latter, speaks, indeed, of things which happen to those that energize enthusiastically, yet does not teach that which is precedaneous. But this consists in being wholly possessed by divinity, which is afterwards followed by mental alienation. No one, therefore, can justly apprehend that enthusiasm is something pertaining to the soul, or to some one of its powers, or to intellect or energies, or to corporeal imbecility, or that it cannot subsist without the debility of the body. For neither is the work of divine inspiration human, nor does the whole of it depend on human powers and energies; but these, indeed, have the relation of a subject, and divinity uses them as instruments. He accomplishes, however, the whole work of divination through himself, and being separated in an unmingled manner from other things, neither the soul nor the body being at all moved, he energizes by himself. Hence, when divinations are rightly effected in the way which I have mentioned, then they subsist without falsehood. But when the soul has been previously disturbed, or is moved in the interim, or the body intervenes, and confounds the divine harmony, then divinations become turbulent and false, and the enthusiasm is no longer true nor genuine.