when they are brought to a trial, they confess themselves guilty of wickednesses, which they never perpetrated, though they know that they must suffer death for their confession. Moreover, every body knows how wonderfully the mind is disturbed in melancholies. One of them thinks his head is made of glass, and is afraid of stirring abroad, for fear of having it broken: another believes himself to be actually dead, and refuses food, because the dead ought not to eat. There are a thousand stories of this kind. I remember, a man of letters, with whom I was well acquainted, who positively asserted that he was big with child, and was vastly anxious for a happy delivery. I saw two others, who, when alone, fancied they heard the words of people whispering them in the ear. Nor is their case different, in my opinion, who persuade themselves that they see ghosts and hobgoblins. For deliriums are a kind of dreams of people awake; and the mind in both cases affects the body differently, according to the nature of its objects. From what we have said, it manifestly appears, how many different ways the lessons of imagination, when they are confirm’d by long habit, are capable of affecting a man, and entirely ruining his whole frame. But every body knows, that the human mind is disturbed by nothing more than by fear; the cause of which is self-love ingrafted in all men. Whereas then, as Cicero very justly observes, _there is no nation so savage, no man so rude, as not to have some notion of the gods_;[108] it is no wonder, that men conscious of wicked deeds, should be struck with the fear of God, whose empire over all created things they acknowledged. For, as they attributed every good thing, every benefit of this life, to the gods; so they were of opinion, that evils and calamities were sent down by them in punishment of crimes. Now, idolatry, as I said above,[109] had its origin among the Chaldeans; and at first it consisted in the worship of the sun and moon, but afterwards it was extended to the adoration of dæmons.[110] But these were believed to be divine ministers; and that they were originally the souls of heroes and great men, who were worshipped for services done to mankind in general, or to their native country in particular. And this dæmoniac religion being propagated from the Chaldæans to the Phœnicians, then to the Egyptians, came afterwards to the Greeks, thence to the Romans, and in progress of time to the other nations. [108] _Tusc. quæst. Lib. i. 13._ [109] _Cap. i. p. 5._ [110] _See Sir Isaac Newton’s Chronology, p. 160._