The paroxysms are twofold: in the body they appear as violent convulsions accompanied by a contraction of the throat and the _globulus hystericus_; saliva forms in abundance, black, coal-like lumps are thrown up and the breath is hot and ill-smelling. In this mental form they appear as a raging of the demon against the possessed and against religion--in fact a struggle of the patient with himself and his former convictions. Occasionally the good principle within him assumes, in contradistinction to the demon who personifies the evil principle, the form of a guardian angel, who comforts the poor sufferer as he is tossed to and fro like a ship in a tempest, and promises him assistance. Nor is the demon always alone; there may be, as Holy Writ teaches, seven, thousands, or their name may be "Legions," for these visionary beings are only so many representatives of certain evil principles at work in the soul of the possessed. Some patients have been enabled to trace this connection and to discover that each symptom of their disease was thus personified by a separate demon to whom in their paroxysms they ascribed the infliction: Lucifer caused pricking and stinging pains, Anzian tearing and scratching, Junian convulsions of limbs, etc. The fearful suffering which demoniacs have to undergo and the still more harassing conflicts in their soul drive them frequently to despair and engender thoughts of suicide. During these paroxysms the struggle between light and darkness, heaven and hell, eternal bliss and damnation, angel and devil, is carried on with such energy and dramatic truthfulness that those who witness it are apt to become deeply excited and often suffer not a little from the violent transitions from sympathy to horror and from heartfelt pity to unspeakable disgust. As soon as the dualism in the soul relaxes, and with it the disease becomes milder, the demon also grows more quiet; a happy moment of rest ensues, which the exorciser calls the period of conversion; and when this has once taken place the patient is no longer able to distinguish the demon as apart from himself, the contradistinction exists no more, and he is reconciled to his true self.