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The definition which Apuleius gives of demons, and in which he of
course includes all demons, is that they are in nature animals, in
soul subject to passion, in mind reasonable, in body aerial, in
duration eternal. Now in these five qualities he has named absolutely
nothing which is proper to good men and not also to bad. For when
Apuleius had spoken of the celestials first, and had then extended his
description so as to include an account of those who dwell far below on
the earth, that, after describing the two extremes of rational being,
he might proceed to speak of the intermediate demons, he says,
"Men, therefore, who are endowed with the faculty of reason and
speech, whose soul is immortal and their members mortal, who have weak
and anxious spirits, dull and corruptible bodies, dissimilar
characters, similar ignorance, who are obstinate in their audacity,
and persistent in their hope, whose labor is vain, and whose fortune
is ever on the wane, their race immortal, themselves perishing, each
generation replenished with creatures whose life is swift and their
wisdom slow, their death sudden and their life a wail, these are the
men who dwell on the earth." In recounting so many qualities which
belong to the large proportion of men, did he forget that which is the
property of the few when he speaks of their wisdom being slow? If this
had been omitted, this his description of the human race, so carefully
elaborated, would have been defective. And when he commended the
excellence of the gods, he affirmed that they excelled in that very
blessedness to which he thinks men must attain by wisdom. And
therefore, if he had wished us to believe that some of the demons are
good, he should have inserted in his description something by which we
might see that they have, in common with the gods, some share of
blessedness, or, in common with men, some wisdom. But, as it is,
he has mentioned no good quality by which the good may be distinguished
from the bad. For although he refrained from giving a full account of
their wickedness, through fear of offending, not themselves but their
worshippers, for whom he was writing, yet he sufficiently indicated to
discerning readers what opinion he had of them; for only in the one
article of the eternity of their bodies does he assimilate them to the
gods, all of whom, he asserts, are good and blessed, and absolutely
free from what he himself calls the stormy passions of the demons; and
as to the soul, he quite plainly affirms that they resemble men and not
the gods, and that this resemblance lies not in the possession of
wisdom, which even men can attain to, but in the perturbation of
passions which sway the foolish and wicked, but is so ruled by the good
and wise that they prefer not to admit rather than to conquer it. For
if he had wished it to be understood that the demons resembled the gods
in the eternity not of their bodies but of their souls, he would
certainly have admitted men to share in this privilege, because, as a
Platonist, he of course must hold that the human soul is eternal.
Accordingly, when describing this race of living beings, he said that
their souls were immortal, their members mortal. And, consequently,
if men have not eternity in common with the gods because they have
mortal bodies, demons have eternity in common with the gods because
their bodies are immortal.
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