The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [56]
Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which
every one in himself calleth religion.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
The gods watch over us and guide our destinies, many human cultures teach; other entities, more malevolent, are responsible for the existence of evil. Both classes of beings, whether considered natural or supernatural, real or imaginary, serve human needs. Even if they’re wholly fanciful, people feel better believing in them. So in an age when traditional religions have been under withering fire from science, is it not natural to wrap up the old gods and demons in scientific raiment and call them aliens?
Belief in demons was widespread in the ancient world. They were thought of as natural rather than supernatural beings. Hesiod casually mentions them. Socrates described his philosophical inspiration as the work of a personal, benign demon. His teacher, Diotima of Mantineia, tells him (in Plato’s Symposium) that ‘Everything demonic is intermediate between God and mortal.
God has no contact with man,’ she continues; ‘only through the demonic is there intercourse and conversation between man and gods, whether in the waking state or during sleep.’
Plato, Socrates’ most celebrated student, assigned a high role to demons: ‘No human nature invested with supreme power is able to order human affairs,’ he said, ‘and not overflow with insolence and wrong...’
We do not appoint oxen to be the lords of oxen, or goats of goats, but we ourselves are a superior race and rule over them. In like manner God, in his love of mankind, placed over us the demons, who are a superior race, and they with great ease and pleasure to themselves, and no less to us, taking care of us and giving us peace and reverence and order and justice never failing, made the tribes of men happy and united.
He stoutly denied that demons were a source of evil, and represented Eros, the keeper of sexual passions, as a demon, not a god, ‘neither mortal nor immortal’, ‘neither good nor bad’. But all later Platonists, including the Neo-Platonists who powerfully influenced Christian philosophy, held that some demons were good and others evil. The pendulum was swinging. Aristotle, Plato’s famous student, seriously considered the contention that dreams are scripted by demons. Plutarch and Porphyry proposed that the demons, who filled the upper air, came from the Moon.
The early Church Fathers, despite having imbibed Neo-Platonism from the culture they swam in, were anxious to separate themselves from ‘pagan’ belief systems. They taught that all of pagan religion consisted of the worship of demons and men, both misconstrued as gods. When St Paul complained (Ephesians vi, 12) about wickedness in high places, he was referring not to government corruption, but to demons, who lived in high places:
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
From the beginning, much more was intended than demons as a mere poetic metaphor for the evil in the hearts of men.
St Augustine was much vexed with demons. He quotes the pagan thinking prevalent in his time: ‘The gods occupy the loftiest regions, men the lowest, the demons the middle region... They have immortality of body, but passions of the mind in common with men.’ In Book VIII of The City of God (begun in 413), Augustine assimilates this ancient tradition, replaces gods by God, and demonizes the demons, arguing that they are, without exception, malign. They have no redeeming virtues. They are the fount of all spiritual and material evil. He calls them ‘aerial animals... most eager to inflict harm, utterly alien from righteousness, swollen with pride, pale with envy, subtle in deceit.’ They may profess to carry messages between God and man, disguising themselves as angels of the Lord, but this pose is a snare to lure us to our destruction. They can assume any form, and know many things - ‘demon’ means ‘knowledge’ in Greek* -especially about