To the primitive mind all diseases are caused by, or rather _are_, bad spirits. Porphyry[426] tells us that blisters are caused by evil spirits which come at us when we eat certain food and settle on our bodies. He goes to the very heart of ancient religious ‘aversion’ when he adds that it is on account of this that purifications are practised, _not in order that we may induce the presence of the gods, but that these wretched things may keep off_. He might have added, it is on account of these bad spirits that we fast; indeed ἁγνεία, the word he uses, means abstinence as well as purity. Eating is highly dangerous because you have your mouth open and a Ker may get in. If a Ker should get in when you are about to partake of specially holy food there will naturally be difficulties. So argues the savage. Porphyry being a vegetarian says that these bad spirits specially delight in blood and impurities generally and they ‘creep into people who make use of such things.’ If you kept about you holy plants with strong scents and purging properties, like rue and buckthorn, you might keep the Keres away, or, if they got in, might speedily and safely eject them. The physical character of the Keres, their connection with ‘the lusts of the flesh,’ comes out very clearly in a quaint moralising poem preserved by Stobaeus and attributed to Linos. It deals with the dangers of Keres and the necessity for meeting them by ‘purification.’ Its ascetic tone and its attribution to Linos probably point to Orphic origin. It runs as follows[427]: ‘Hearken to these my sayings, zealously lend me your hearing To the simple truth about all things. Drive far away the disastrous Keres, they who destroy the herd of the vulgar and fetter All things around with curses manifold. Many and dreadful Shapes do they take to deceive. But keep them far from thy spirit, Ever watchful in mind. This is the purification That shall rightly and truly purge thee to sanctification (If but in truth thou hatest the baleful race of the Keres), And most of all thy belly, the giver of all things shameful, For desire is her charioteer and she drives with the driving of madness.’ It is commonly said that diseases are ‘personified’ by the Greeks. This is to invert the real order of primitive thought. It is not that a disease is realized as a power and then turned into a person, it is that primitive man seems unable to conceive of any force except as resulting from some person or being or sprite, something a little like himself. Such is the state of mind of the modern Greek peasant who writes Χολέρα with a capital letter. Hunger, pestilence, madness, nightmare have each a sprite behind them; _are_ all sprites. Of course, as Hesiod[428] knew, there were ancient golden days when these sprites were not let loose, when they were shut up safe in a cask and