As Demokritus supposed both sensations and thoughts to be determined by effluvia from without, so he assumed a similar cause to account for beliefs, comfortable or uncomfortable dispositions, fancies, dreams, presentiments, &c. He supposed that the air contained many effluences, spectres, images, cast off from persons and substances in nature--sometimes even from outlying very distant objects which lay beyond the bounds of the Kosmos. Of these images, impregnated with the properties, bodily and mental, of the objects from whence they came, some were beneficent, others mischievous: they penetrated into the human body through the pores and spread their influence all through the system.[240] Those thrown off by jealous and vindictive men were especially hurtful,[241] as they inflicted suffering corresponding to the tempers of those with whom they originated. Trains of thought and feeling were thus excited in men's minds; in sleep,[242] dreams, divinations, prophetic warnings, and threats, were communicated: sometimes, pestilence and other misfortunes were thus begun. Demokritus believed that men's happiness depended much upon the nature and character of the images which might approach them, expressing an anxious wish that he might himself meet with such as were propitious.[243] It was from grand and terrific images of this nature, that he supposed the idea and belief of the Gods to have arisen: a supposition countenanced by the numerous tales, respecting appearances of the Gods both to dreaming and to waking men, current among the poets and in the familiar talk of Greece. [Footnote 240: Demokriti Frag. p. 207, Mullach; Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathemat. ix. 19; Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 10, p. 735 A.] [Footnote 241: Plutarch, Symposiac. v. 7, p. 683 A.] [Footnote 242: Aristotel. De Divinat. per Somnum, p. 464, a. 5; Plutarch, Symposiac. viii. 9, p. 733 E. [Greek: o(/ti kai\ ko/smôn e)kto\s phthare/ntôn kai\ sôma/tôn a)llophu/lôn e)k tê=s a)por)r(oi/as e)pir)r(eo/ntôn, e)ntau=tha polla/kis a)rchai\ parempi/ptousi loimô=n kai\ pathô=n ou) sunê/thôn.]] [Footnote 243: Plutarch, De Oraculor. Defectu, p. 419. [Greek: au)to\s eu)/chetai eu)lo/gchôn ei)dôlôn tugcha/nein.]] [Side-note: Universality of Demokritus--his ethical views.]