De Tribus Impostoribus, A. D. 1230: The Three Impostors / Translated (with notes and comments) from a French manuscript of the work written in the year 1716, with a dissertation on the original treatise and a bibliography of the various editions

by Unknown

II.

These two kinds of Philosophers being opposed in the opinion which they had of phantoms, agreed in the name which they gave them, for all called them Demons, in which they were but little more enlightened than those who believed they saw in their sleep the souls of the dead, and that it is their soul which they see when they look in a mirror, and who also believed that they saw (reflected) in the water the souls of the stars. After this foolish fancy they fell into an error which is hardly less supportable, that is, the current idea that these phantoms had infinite power. An absurd but ordinary belief with the ignorant who imagined that whatever they did not understand was an infinite power.