[284] Porphyry and other philosophers explain the nature of the dwellers. They are mischievous and deceitful, though some of them are perfectly gentle and harmless, but so weak as to have the greatest difficulty in communicating with mortals whose company they seek incessantly. The former are not wicked through intelligent malice. The law of spiritual evolution not having yet developed their instinct into intelligence, whose highest light belongs but to immortal spirits, their powers of reasoning are in a latent state and, therefore, they themselves, irresponsible.
But the Latin Church contradicts the Kabalists. St. Augustine has even a discussion on that account with Porphyry, the Neo-platonist. “These spirits,” he says, “are deceitful, not by their nature, as Porphyry, the theurgist, will have it, but through malice. They pass themselves off for gods and for the souls of the defunct” (“Civit. Dei,” book x., ch. 2). So far Porphyry agrees with him; “but they do not claim to be demons [read devils], for they are such in reality!” adds the bishop of Hippo. But then, under what class should we place the men without heads, whom Augustine wishes us to believe he saw himself? or the satyrs of St. Jerome, which he asserts were exhibited for a considerable length of time at Alexandria? They were, he tells us, “men with the legs and tails of goats;” and, if we may believe him, one of these Satyrs was actually pickled and sent in a cask to the Emperor Constantine!
[285] “Tria capita exsculpta sunt, una intra alterum, et alterum supra alterum” (Sohar; “Idra Suta,” sectio vii.)
[286] Gentle gale (lit.)
[287] Higgins: “Anacalypsis;” also “Dupruis.”
[288] Mallett: “Northern Antiquities,” pp. 401-406, and “The Songs of a Völuspa” Edda.
[289] From a London Spiritualist Journal.
[290] Hemmann: “Medico-Surgical Essays,” Berl., 1778.
[291] Robert Fludd: “Treatise III.”
[292] Prof. J. P. Cooke: “New Chemistry.”