riental sacred literatures. In the series of Assyrian
mythological tablets in which we find those legends of the Creation, the
Fall, the Flood, and other early conceptions from which the Hebrews so
largely drew the accounts wrought into the book of Genesis, have been
discovered the formulas for driving out the evil spirits which cause
disease. In the Persian theology regarding the struggle of the great
powers of good and evil this idea was developed to its highest point.
From these and other ancient sources the Jews naturally received this
addition to their earlier view: the Mocker of the Garden of Eden became
Satan, with legions of evil angels at his command; and the theory of
diabolic causes of mental disease took a firm place in our sacred books.
Such cases in the Old Testament as the evil spirit in Saul, which we
now see to have been simply melancholy--and, in the New Testament,
the various accounts of the casting out of devils, through which is
refracted the beautiful and simple story of that power by which Jesus of
Nazareth soothed perturbed minds by his presence or quelled outbursts
of madness by his words, give examples of this. In Greece, too, an
idea akin to this found lodgment both in the popular belief and in the
philosophy of Plato and Socrates; and though, as we have seen, the great
leaders in medical science had taught with more or less distinctness
that insanity is the result of physical disease, there was a strong
popular tendency to attribute the more troublesome cases of it to
hostile spiritual influence.(344)

(344) For the exorcism against disease found at Ninevah, see G. Smith,
Delitzsch's German translation, p. 34. For a very interesting passage
regarding the representaion of a diabolic personage on a Babylonian
bronze, and for a very frank statement regarding the transmission of
ideas regarding Satanic power to our sacred books, see Sayce, Herodotus,
appendix ii, p. 393. It is, indeed, extremely doubtful whether Plato
himself or his contemporaries knew anything of evil demons, this
conception probably coming into the Greek world, as into the Latin,
with the Oriental influences that began to prevail about the time of the
birth of Christ; but to the early Christians, a demon was a demon, and
Plato's, good or bad, were pagan, and therefore devils. The Greek word
"epilepsy" is itself a survival of the old belief, fossilized in a word,
since its literal meaning refers to the SEIZURE of the patie