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.
III.
This ridiculous opinion was no sooner published than the Sovereigns began to use it to support their power. They established a belief concerning spirits which they called Religion, so that the fear which the people possessed for invisible powers would hold them to their obedience. To have it carry more influence they distinguished the demons as good and bad. The latter to encourage men to obey their laws, and the former to restrain and prevent them from infringing them. Now to learn what these demons were it is only necessary to read the Greek poets and their histories, and above all what Hesiod says in his Theogony where he fully treats of the origin and propagation of the Gods.
IV.
The Greeks were the first who invented them, and by them they were propagated through the medium of their colonies, and their conquests in Asia, Egypt and Italy. The Jews who were dispersed in Alexandria and elsewhere got their acquaintance with them from the Greeks. They used them as effectively as the other peoples but with this difference, they did not call them Demons like the Greeks, but good and bad spirits; reserving for the good Demons the name of Spirit of God, and calling those Prophets who were said to possess this good spirit called the Divine, which they held as responsible for great blessings, and cacodaemons or Evil spirits on the contrary those which were provocative of great Evil.
V.
This distinction of good and evil made them name as Demoniacs those whom we call lunatics, visionaries, madmen and epileptics, and those who spoke to them in an unknown tongue. A man ill-shaped and of evil look was to their notion possessed of an unclean spirit, and a mute of a dumb spirit. Now, these words spirit and demon became so familiar to them that they spoke of them on all occasions, so that it is evident that the Jews believed like the Greeks, that these phantoms were not mere chimeras and visions, but real beings that existed independent of imagination.