City of God 9.8–9.19

Chapter 8. On the definition given by Apuleius the Platonist of the heavenly gods, the aerial demons, and earthly men.

What of that definition of demons itself — is it to be given too little attention (where he certainly included all of them in his definition)? He says that demons are “in kind, animals; in soul, subject to passion; in mind, rational; in body, aerial; in time, eternal.” In these five things he said nothing at all by which demons might seem to have in common with at least good men something that is not in bad men. For when he included men themselves in a somewhat fuller description, speaking of them in their place as the lowest and earthly beings — after he had first spoken of the heavenly gods, so that, having set forth the two extreme parts, the highest and the lowest, he might speak last, in the third place, of the demons in the middle — he says: “Men, then, famed for reason, powerful in speech, with immortal souls and dying limbs, with light and anxious minds, brutish and vulnerable bodies, unlike in morals, alike in errors, of obstinate daring, persistent hope, vain labor, fleeting fortune, mortal as individuals, yet perpetual as a whole race, changing in turn by the offspring that succeeds them, of swift time, slow wisdom, quick death, and complaining life, inhabit the earth.” When he said so many things here that pertain to most men, did he keep silent even about that which he knew belongs to few, when he says “slow wisdom”? If he had omitted this, he would by no means have rightly defined the human race with such careful diligence of description. But when he commended the excellence of the gods, he affirmed that happiness itself, to which men wish to come through wisdom, is pre-eminent in them. Accordingly, if he had wanted some demons to be understood as good, he would have put something in their description too, by which they might be thought to have in common either some part of happiness with the gods or some wisdom with men. But as it is, he mentioned no good of theirs by which the good are distinguished from the bad. Though he refrained from expressing their malice more freely, not so much so as not to offend them as not to offend their worshippers, among whom he was speaking, yet he indicated to the prudent what they should think of them. For he separated the gods, whom he wanted to be believed all good and happy, in every way from the passions, and, as he himself says, the turmoils of the demons, joining them only in the eternity of their bodies; while he most plainly insisted that in mind the demons are like not the gods but men — and this not by the good of wisdom, in which men too can share, but by the perturbation of passions, which rules the foolish and the bad, but is so ruled by the wise and good that they would rather not have it than conquer it. For if he had wanted it understood that demons have in common with the gods the eternity not of bodies but of souls, he certainly would not have separated men from sharing in this, since he, as a Platonist, undoubtedly holds that men too have eternal souls. That is why, when he described this kind of living being, he said that men have “immortal souls and dying limbs.” And so, if men do not have eternity in common with the gods because they are mortal in body, then demons have it because they are immortal in body.

Chapter 9. Whether the friendship of the heavenly gods can be secured for man through the intercession of demons.

What kind of mediators between men and gods, then, are these, through whom men are to court the friendship of the gods — beings who have in common with men the worse state of what is better in a living being, namely the soul, and have in common with the gods the better state of what is worse in a living being, namely the body? For a living being, that is, an animal, consists of soul and body, and of these two the soul is certainly better than the body — even if vicious and weak, it is certainly better than even the healthiest and strongest body, since its nature is more excellent and is not put below the body even by the stain of vices, as gold, even when dirty, is valued above silver or lead, however pure. These mediators between gods and men, through whose interposition human things are joined to divine, have an eternal body in common with the gods, but a vicious soul in common with men — as though the religion by which they want men to be joined to the gods through demons were established in the body, not in the soul! What wickedness or punishment, pray, has hung these false and deceitful mediators head downward, as it were, so that they have the lower part of a living being, that is, the body, with the higher beings, and the higher part, that is, the soul, with the lower; and are joined to the heavenly gods in the part that serves, while they are wretched with earthly men in the part that rules? For the body is a servant, as Sallust too says: “We use the mind rather to rule, the body to serve.” And he added: “The one we have in common with the gods, the other with the beasts,” since he was speaking of men, who, like beasts, have a mortal body. But these, whom the philosophers have provided for us as mediators between us and the gods, can indeed say of soul and body, “The one we have in common with the gods, the other with men”; but, as I said, they are as if bound and hung upside down, having the servant body with the happy gods and the master soul with wretched men, exalted in their lower part and cast down in their higher. Hence, even if anyone should think that they have eternity in common with the gods because their souls are not loosed from the body by any death, as those of earthly animals are, even so their body is not to be thought of as the eternal vehicle of the honored but as the eternal chain of the condemned.

Chapter 10. That, according to the opinion of Plotinus, men in a mortal body are less wretched than demons in an eternal one.

Plotinus, certainly, in times close to our own memory, is praised for having understood Plato better than the rest. When he was dealing with human souls, he says: “The Father, in his mercy, made their bonds mortal.” Thus he thought that the very fact that men are mortal in body belongs to the mercy of God the Father, so that they might not be held forever in the misery of this life. Of this mercy the wickedness of the demons was judged unworthy, which, in the misery of a soul subject to passion, received not a mortal body like men but an eternal one. For they would be happier than men if they had a mortal body in common with men and a happy soul in common with the gods. And they would be equal to men if, with a wretched soul, they had deserved at least to have a mortal body in common with them — provided, however, that they acquired some piety, so as to rest from their troubles at least in death. But as it is, they are not only not happier than men, having a wretched soul, but even more wretched, through the perpetual chain of the body. For he did not want it understood that demons become gods by progressing in some discipline of piety and wisdom, since he said most plainly that the demons are eternal.

Chapter 11. On the opinion of the Platonists by which they think that the souls of men become demons after leaving their bodies.

He says, indeed, that the souls of men too are demons, and that from men there come lares, if they are of good merit; lemures or larvae, if bad; and that they are called gods Manes if it is uncertain whether they are of good or bad merit. Who does not see, if he pays even a little attention, how great an abyss this opinion opens for pursuing depraved morals? For however wicked men have been, while they suppose they will become larvae or gods Manes, they become all the worse the more eager they are to do harm, so that they even suppose they will be invited after death with certain sacrifices, as with divine honors, in order to do harm. For he says that larvae are harmful demons made from men. But that is another question. He also says that the happy are called in Greek eudaimones because they are good souls, that is, good demons, confirming that the souls of men too are demons.

Chapter 12. On the three contraries by which, according to the Platonists, the nature of demons and of men is distinguished.

But now we are dealing with those whom he described in their own nature, between gods and men, as in kind animals, in mind rational, in soul subject to passion, in body aerial, in time eternal. For after he had first distinguished the gods in the lofty heaven and men on the lowest earth, separated by place and by dignity of nature, he concluded thus: “You have, then, meanwhile, two kinds of living beings: gods, differing very greatly from men in loftiness of place, perpetuity of life, and perfection of nature, with no close communication between them, since so great an interval of height separates the highest dwellings from the lowest, and life there is eternal and unfailing, here fleeting and interrupted, and their minds are raised to happiness, ours lowered to miseries.” Here I see three contraries mentioned of the two extreme parts of nature, that is, the highest and the lowest. For the three praiseworthy things he proposed about the gods he repeated, in other words, so as to set against them three opposite things from men. The three belonging to the gods are these: loftiness of place, perpetuity of life, perfection of nature. These he repeated in other words so as to set three contraries of the human condition against them. “Since so great an interval of height,” he says, “separates the highest dwellings from the lowest” — because he had said loftiness of place; “and life,” he says, “there is eternal and unfailing, here fleeting and interrupted” — because he had said perpetuity of life; “and their minds,” he says, “are raised to happiness, ours lowered to miseries” — because he had said perfection of nature. So he has set out three things belonging to the gods, namely lofty place, eternity, happiness; and three contrary things belonging to men, namely lowest place, mortality, misery.

Chapter 13. How demons, if they are neither happy with the gods nor wretched with men, can be in the middle between the two without sharing in either.

Since he placed the demons in the middle between these three characteristics of gods and of men, there is no controversy about place; for between the highest and the lowest a middle place is most aptly held and said to be. The other two remain, to which more careful attention must be paid: how they are either shown to be foreign to the demons, or how they are distributed to them as their middle position seems to require. But they cannot be foreign to them. For we cannot rightly say that demons, since they are rational animals, are neither happy nor wretched, as we say that a middle place is neither highest nor lowest, or as shrubs and cattle are, which lack sense or reason. Those, then, whose minds have reason must necessarily be either wretched or happy. Likewise we cannot rightly say that demons are neither mortal nor eternal. For all living things either live forever or end their life by death. Now he said that demons are eternal in time. What remains, then, except that these middle beings have one of the two highest things and the other of the two lowest? For if they have both of the lowest, or both of the highest, they will not be in the middle, but will either spring up or sink down to one side or the other. Since, then, as has been shown, they cannot lack both of these pairs, they will be in the middle by taking one from each side. And so, since they cannot have eternity from the lowest, where it is not, they have this one thing from the highest; and therefore there is nothing else for them to have from the lowest to complete their middle position except misery. So, according to the Platonists, the lofty gods have either a happy eternity or an eternal happiness; lowly men have either a mortal misery or a miserable mortality; and the demons in the middle have either a miserable eternity or an eternal misery. For even by those five things which he put in the definition of demons he did not show them to be in the middle, as he promised; for he said that they have three things in common with us — that they are animals in kind, rational in mind, subject to passion in soul — one in common with the gods, that they are eternal in time, and one proper to themselves, that they are aerial in body. How, then, are they in the middle, when they have one thing with the highest and three with the lowest? Who does not see how far, the middle position abandoned, they are inclined and pressed down to the lowest? But plainly even there they can be found to be in the middle in this way: that they have one thing proper to themselves, which is the aerial body, as those at the highest and lowest have each their own, the gods an ethereal body and men an earthly one; and that two things are common to all, that they are animals in kind and rational in mind. For he himself, when speaking of gods and men, says, “You have two kinds of living beings”; and these men do not usually call the gods anything but rational in mind. Two things remain: that they are subject to passion in soul and eternal in time; of these they have one with the lowest and the other with the highest, so that their middle position, balanced in proportion, is neither raised to the highest nor pressed down to the lowest. But that is the miserable eternity, or eternal misery, of the demons. For he who said “subject to passion in soul” would also have said “miserable,” had he not been ashamed before their worshippers. Moreover, since the world is ruled by the providence of the supreme God, as they themselves admit, and not by chance and rashness, the misery of these beings would never be eternal unless their malice were great. If, then, the happy are rightly called eudaimones, the demons whom these men have placed in the middle between men and gods are not eudaimones. What place, then, is there for good demons, who, above men and below gods, might give help to the one and service to the other? For if they are good and eternal, they are certainly also happy. But eternal happiness does not allow them to be in the middle, because it greatly likens them to the gods and greatly separates them from men. Hence these men will try in vain to show how good demons, if they are both immortal and happy, are rightly placed in the middle between the immortal and happy gods and mortal and wretched men. For since they have both things in common with the gods, namely happiness and immortality, and neither in common with men, who are wretched and mortal, how are they not rather far from men and joined to the gods, instead of being placed in the middle between both? For they would be in the middle only if they too had two things of their own, in common not with both of either party, but with one of each; as man is something in the middle, but between beasts and angels. Since a beast is an irrational and mortal animal, and an angel a rational and immortal one, man is in the middle, lower than the angels and higher than the beasts, having mortality in common with the beasts and reason with the angels: a rational mortal animal. So when we seek a middle between the happy immortals and the wretched mortals, we must find something that is either mortal and happy or immortal and wretched.

Chapter 14. Whether men, since they are mortal, can be happy with true happiness.

Whether man can be both happy and mortal is a great question among men. For some have looked on their condition more humbly and denied that man can be capable of happiness as long as he lives mortally. But others have exalted themselves and dared to say that mortals who possess wisdom can be happy. If this is so, why are not these men rather placed in the middle between wretched mortals and happy immortals, having happiness in common with the happy immortals and mortality in common with the wretched mortals? For surely, if they are happy, they envy no one (for what is more wretched than envy?), and therefore they counsel wretched mortals as much as they can toward attaining happiness, so that after death they too may be able to be immortal and be joined to the immortal and happy angels.

Chapter 15. On the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

But if, as is argued much more credibly and probably, all men, as long as they are mortal, must also be wretched, then we must seek a mediator who is not only man but also God, so that the happy mortality of this mediator, by intervening, may bring men from mortal misery to happy immortality. It was necessary that he should both become mortal and not remain mortal. He became mortal, not by the weakening of the divinity of the Word, but by taking on the weakness of the flesh; but he did not remain mortal in that flesh, which he raised from the dead. For this is the very fruit of his mediation: that those for whose deliverance he became mediator should not themselves remain in perpetual death, even of the flesh. Therefore the mediator between us and God had to have both a passing mortality and an abiding happiness, so that by what passes he might be fitted to those who must die, and might carry them over from the dead to what abides. The good angels, then, cannot be in the middle between wretched mortals and happy immortals, because they too are both happy and immortal; but the bad angels can be in the middle, because they are immortal with the one and wretched with the other. Contrary to these is the good mediator, who, against their immortality and misery, willed to be mortal for a time and was able to remain happy in eternity. And so, lest those proud immortals and harmful wretches should lead men astray to misery by boasting of immortality, he destroyed them, by the humility of his death and the kindness of his happiness, in those whose hearts he cleansed through faith in him and freed from their most unclean dominion. What mediator, then, should mortal and wretched man, far separated from the immortal and happy, choose, through whom he may be joined to immortality and happiness? What might delight in the immortality of the demons is wretched; what might offend in the mortality of Christ no longer exists. There, then, eternal misery is to be avoided; here death is not to be feared, which could not be eternal, and eternal happiness is to be loved. For the immortal and wretched mediator interposes himself for this purpose, that he may not let us pass over to happy immortality, since what hinders, namely misery itself, persists; but the mortal and happy mediator interposed himself for this purpose, that, when mortality had passed, he might make immortals out of the dead, as he showed in himself by rising again, and happy beings out of the wretched, from which state he himself never departed. There is, then, one bad mediator, who separates friends, and another good one, who reconciles enemies. And there are many separating mediators, because the multitude which is happy is made happy by participation in the one God. The multitude of evil angels, wretched through being deprived of this participation, sets itself in the way to hinder rather than interposing itself to help toward happiness, and by its very multitude it makes a kind of clamor, so that one cannot come to that one beatifying good. To be brought to it we needed not many mediators but one, and that the very one by participation in whom we are happy, that is, the Word of God, not made, through whom all things were made. Yet he is not the mediator because he is the Word; for the Word, supremely immortal and supremely happy, is far from wretched mortals. He is mediator because he is man, thereby showing that for that good, which is not only happy but beatifying, we must not seek other mediators, through whom we might think we must build steps of approach; for the happy and beatifying God, having become a partaker of our humanity, has given us a short way to partake of his divinity. For in freeing us from mortality and misery he does not lead us to the immortal and happy angels so that by participation in them we too may be immortal and happy, but to that Trinity by participation in which the angels too are happy. Therefore, when in the form of a servant, in order to be mediator, he willed to be below the angels, in the form of God he remained above the angels; the same one being the way of life in the lower realm who is the life in the higher.

Chapter 16. Whether the Platonists reasonably defined that the heavenly gods, shunning earthly contagion, do not mingle with men, whom demons assist toward the friendship of the gods.

For it is not true, what the same Platonist says Plato said: “No god mingles with man”; and he says that this is the chief mark of their exaltation, that they are not contaminated by any contact with men. He admits, then, that demons are contaminated; and therefore they cannot cleanse those by whom they are contaminated, and all become unclean alike, the demons by contact with men and men by the worship of demons. Or if demons can be touched by and mingle with men and yet not be contaminated, they are certainly better than the gods, since the gods would be contaminated if they mingled. For this is said to be the chief thing about the gods, that, being separated on high, human contact cannot contaminate them. He asserts, indeed, that the supreme God, the creator of all, whom we call the true God, is proclaimed by Plato to be the only one who cannot, through the poverty of human speech, be even moderately grasped by any discourse; and that to wise men, when they have removed themselves from the body by the vigor of the mind as far as they could, the understanding of this God comes hardly, and even that at times flashes out like a bright light with a most rapid gleam in the deepest darkness. If, then, the truly supreme God above all things is present, by a certain intelligible and ineffable presence — though only at times, and though like a bright light flashing with a most rapid gleam — to the minds of the wise when they have removed themselves from the body as far as they could, and cannot be contaminated by them, why are these gods placed far off in a lofty place, lest they be contaminated by human contact? As if those ethereal bodies, by whose light the earth is illumined as far as it needs, required anything more than to be seen! Further, if the stars are not contaminated when they are seen, all of whom he calls visible gods, neither are the demons contaminated by the sight of men, even though they are seen from close by. Or perhaps those who are not contaminated by the gaze of eyes would be contaminated by human voices, and therefore they have the demons in the middle, through whom men's voices are reported to them, while they remain far away, so as to continue utterly uncontaminated? What shall I say now of the other senses? For neither could the gods, if they were present, be contaminated by smelling, nor can the demons, when present, be contaminated by the vapors of living human bodies, if they are not contaminated by the great stench of carcasses from the sacrifices. As for the sense of taste, they are pressed by no necessity of refreshing mortality, so as to seek food from men when driven by hunger. And touch is in their power. For though contact seems to be named chiefly from that sense, yet they could mingle with men, if they wished, so far as to see and be seen, to hear and be heard. What necessity is there of touching? For men would not dare to desire it while they enjoyed the sight or conversation of gods or good demons; and if curiosity went so far as to wish it, how could anyone touch a god or demon against his will, when he cannot touch a sparrow unless he has caught it? By seeing, then, and offering themselves to be seen, and by speaking and hearing, the gods could mingle bodily with men. But if the demons mingle in this way, as I said, and are not contaminated, while the gods would be contaminated if they mingled, they call the demons uncontaminable and the gods contaminable. But if the demons too are contaminated, what do they contribute to men for the happy life after death? Being contaminated, they cannot cleanse them so as to join them, cleansed, to the uncontaminated gods, between whom and men they have been placed in the middle. Or if they confer no such benefit on them, what good to men is the friendly mediation of demons? Is it so that after death men may not pass over to the gods through the demons, but that both may live together contaminated, and therefore neither happy? Unless perhaps someone says that the demons cleanse their friends in the manner of sponges or such things, so that they themselves become the dirtier the cleaner men become by their wiping, as it were. If this is so, the gods mingle with demons who are more contaminated, although, to avoid being contaminated, they have shunned nearness and contact with men. Or can the gods perhaps cleanse demons contaminated by men without being contaminated by them, and could they not do the same for men? Who would think such things, unless the most deceitful demons had deceived him? And what of this: if seeing and being seen contaminate, the gods whom he calls visible, “the brightest lights of the world,” and the other stars, are seen by men; and the demons, who cannot be seen unless they wish, are safer from this contamination by men? Or if it is not being seen but seeing that contaminates, let them deny that men are seen by these brightest lights of the world, which they suppose to be gods, although they extend their rays all the way to the earth. Yet their rays, poured over all sorts of unclean things, are not contaminated — and would the gods be contaminated if they mingled with men, even if contact were necessary in helping them? For the earth is touched by the rays of the sun and moon, and it does not contaminate this light.

Chapter 17. That to obtain the happy life, which consists in participation in the supreme good, man needs not such a mediator as a demon is, but such as Christ alone is.

I am very much surprised that such learned men, who judged that all bodily and sensible things are to be ranked below incorporeal and intelligible things, should mention bodily contacts when the happy life is in question. Where is that saying of Plotinus, when he says: “We must flee, then, to our dearest fatherland, and there is the Father, and there is everything. What, then,” he says, “is the fleet or the flight? To become like God.” If, then, the more like God one becomes, the nearer one comes to him, there is no other distance from him than unlikeness to him. And the soul of man is the more unlike that incorporeal, eternal, and unchangeable being the more eager it is for temporal and changeable things. For this to be healed, since the mortal and unclean things that are at the bottom cannot be fitted to the immortal purity that is at the top, a mediator is indeed needed — yet not such a one as has a body immortal and near to the highest, but a sick mind like the lowest (by which sickness he would rather begrudge our healing than help us to be healed); but such a one as, fitted to us who are lowest by the mortality of his body, and remaining among the highest by the immortal justice of his spirit — not by distance of place but by excellence of likeness — may give truly divine help for cleansing and freeing us. Far be it that he, the God who cannot be contaminated, should fear contamination from the man with whom he was clothed, or from the men among whom he lived as man. For these two things which he showed for our salvation by his incarnation are not small: that true divinity cannot be contaminated by flesh, and that demons are not therefore to be thought better than we are because they do not have flesh. This is, as holy Scripture proclaims him, “the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” of whose divinity, by which he is always equal to the Father, and humanity, by which he became like us, this is not the place to speak adequately, according to our ability.

Chapter 18. That the deceit of demons, while it promises a way to God by their intercession, strives to turn men from the way of truth.

But those false and deceitful mediators, the demons, who, wretched and malignant through uncleanness of spirit, are yet renowned for many effects, try, by the intervals of bodily places and the lightness of their aerial bodies, to call us away and turn us aside from the progress of our souls. They do not provide a way to God, but hinder us from holding to the way. For even on that bodily way itself — which is most false and full of error, on which justice does not travel, since we must ascend to God not by bodily height but by spiritual, that is, incorporeal, likeness — even on that bodily way, which the friends of demons arrange by the grades of the elements, with aerial demons placed in the middle between ethereal gods and earthly men, they suppose that the gods have this chief privilege, that because of this interval of places they are not contaminated by human contact. So they believe that demons are contaminated by men rather than men cleansed by demons, and that the gods themselves could have been contaminated had they not been protected by the height of their place. Who is so unhappy as to think he is cleansed on this way, where men are proclaimed as contaminating, demons as contaminated, and gods as contaminable, and does not rather choose the way where the demons, who contaminate more, are avoided, and men are cleansed from contamination by the God who cannot be contaminated, so as to enter into fellowship with the uncontaminated angels?

Chapter 19. That the name of demons is no longer taken, even among their worshippers, to mean anything good.

But lest we too seem to be arguing about words, since some of these demon-worshippers, if I may so call them — among whom is Labeo — say that the same beings whom they call demons are called angels by others, I see that I must now discuss something about the good angels, whose existence these men do not deny, but whom they prefer to call good demons rather than angels. But we, as the Scripture speaks, according to which we are Christians, read of angels, some good and some bad, but never of good demons. Wherever this name is found in those writings, whether they are called daemones or daemonia, only malignant spirits are meant. And the peoples have everywhere followed this usage of speech so far that, even among those who are called pagans and contend that many gods and demons are to be worshipped, there is hardly anyone so lettered and learned that he would dare to say by way of praise, even to his slave, “You have a demon”; but whoever might wish to say this could not doubt that he would be understood only as meaning to curse. What reason, then, compels us, after offending so many ears — now almost all ears — which are accustomed to hear this word only in a bad sense, to be forced to explain what we have said, when by using the name of angels we can avoid the offense that could be caused by the name of demons?