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If, now, we endeavor to find between these opposites the mean
occupied by the demons, there can be no question as to their local
position; for, between the highest and lowest place, there is a place
which is rightly considered and called the middle place. The other two
qualities remain, and to them we must give greater care, that we may
see whether they are altogether foreign to the demons, or how they are
so bestowed upon them without infringing upon their mediate position.
We may dismiss the idea that they are foreign to them. For we cannot
say that the demons, being rational animals, are neither blessed nor
wretched, as we say of the beasts and plants, which are void of
feeling and reason, or as we say of the middle place, that it is
neither the highest nor the lowest. The demons, being rational, must
be either miserable or blessed. And, in like manner, we cannot say
that they are neither mortal nor immortal; for all living things either
live eternally or end life in death. Our author, besides, stated
that the demons are eternal. What remains for us to suppose, then,
but that these mediate beings are assimilated to the gods in one of the
two remaining qualities, and to men in the other? For if they
received both from above, or both from beneath, they should no longer
be mediate, but either rise to the gods above, or sink to men
beneath. Therefore, as it has been demonstrated that they must
possess these two qualities, they will hold their middle place if they
receive one from each party. Consequently, as they cannot receive
their eternity from beneath, because it is not there to receive, they
must get it from above; and accordingly they have no choice but to
complete their mediate position by accepting misery from men.
According to the Platonists, then, the gods, who occupy the highest
place, enjoy eternal blessedness, or blessed eternity; men, who
occupy the lowest, a mortal misery, or a miserable mortality; and the
demons, who occupy the mean, a miserable eternity, or an eternal
misery. As to those five things which Apu leius included in his
definition of demons, he did not show, as he promised, that the
demons are mediate. For three of them, that their nature is animal,
their mind rational, their soul subject to passions, he said that they
have in common with men; one thing, their eternity, in common with
the gods; and one proper to themselves, their aerial body. How,
then, are they intermediate, when they have three things in common
with the lowest, and only one in common with the highest? Who does
not see that the intermediate position is abandoned in proportion as
they tend to, and are depressed towards, the lowest extreme? But
perhaps we are to accept them as intermediate because of their one
property of an aerial body, as the two extremes have each their proper
body, the gods an ethereal men a terrestrial body, and because two of
the qualities they possess in common with man they possess also in
common with the gods, namely, their animal nature and rational mind.
For Apuleius himself, in speaking of gods and men, said, "You
have two animal natures." And Platonists are wont to ascribe a
rational mind to the gods. Two qualities remain, their liability to
passion, and their eternity, the first of which they have in common
with men, the second with the gods; so that they are neither wafted to
the highest nor depressed to the lowest extreme, but perfectly poised
in their intermediate position. But then, this is the very
circumstance which constitutes the eternal misery, or miserable
eternity, of the demons. For he who says that their soul is subject
to passions would also have said that they are miserable, had he not
blushed for their worshippers. Moreover, as the world is governed,
not by fortuitous hap-hazard, but, as the Platonists themselves
avow, by the providence of the supreme God, the misery of the demons
would not be eternal unless their wickedness were great.
If, then, the blessed are rightly styled eudemons, the demons
intermediate between gods and men are not eudemons. What, then, is
the local position of those good demons, who, above men but beneath
the gods, afford assistance to the former, minister to the latter?
For if they are good and eternal, they are doubtless blessed. But
eternal blessedness destroys their intermediate character, giving them
a close resemblance to the gods, and widely separating them from men.
And therefore the Platonists will in vain strive to show how the good
demons, if they are both immortal and blessed, can justly be said to
hold a middle place between the gods, who are immortal and blessed,
and men, who are mortal and miserable. For if they have both
immortality and blessedness in common with the gods, and neither of
these in common with men, who are both miserable and mortal, are they
not rather remote from men and united with the gods, than intermediate
between them. They would be intermediate if they held one of their
qualities in common with the one party, and the other with the other,
as man is a kind of mean between angels and beasts, the beast being an
irrational and mortal animal, the angel a rational and immortal one,
while man, inferior to the angel and superior to the beast, and having
in common with the one mortality, and with the other reason, is a
rational and mortal animal. So, when we seek for an intermediate
between the blessed immortals and miserable mortals, we should find a
being which is either mortal and blessed, or immortal and miserable.
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