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 Apuleius 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.
CHAP.14.--WHETHER MEN, THOUGH MORTAL, CAN ENJOY TRUE BLESSEDNESS.
It is a great question among men, whether man can be mortal and blessed.
Some, taking the humbler view of his condition, have denied that he is capable of blessedness so long as he continues in this mortal life; others, again, have spurned this idea, and have been bold enough to maintain that, even though mortal, men may be blessed by attaining wisdom.But if this be the case, why are not these wise men constituted mediators between miserable mortals and the blessed immortals, since they have blessedness in common with the latter, and mortality in common with the former? Certainly, if they are blessed, they envy no one (for what more miserable than envy?), but seek with all their might to help miserable mortals on to blessedness, so that after death they may become immortal, and be associated with the blessed and immortal angels.
CHAP.15.--OF THE MAN CHRIST JESUS, THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN.