s makes six kinds of them, some bigger,
some less, commonly seen about mines of metals, and are some of
them noxious; some again do no harm (they are guardians of
treasure in the earth, and cause earthquakes). The last (sort)
are conversant about the centre of the earth, to torture the
souls of damned men to the day of judgment; their egress and
ingress some suppose to be about AEtna, Lipari, Hecla, Vesuvius,
Terra del Fuego, because many shrieks and fearful cries are
continually heard thereabouts, and familiar apparitions of dead
men, ghosts, and goblins.'

As for the particular offices and operations of those various
tribes, 'Plato, in _Critias_, and after him his followers,
gave out that they were men's governors and keepers, our
lords and masters, as we are of our cattle. They govern
provinces and kingdoms by oracles, auguries, dreams, rewards
and punishments, prophecies, inspirations, sacrifices and
religious _superstitions_, varied in as many forms as there be
diversity of spirits; they send wars, plagues, peace, sickness,
health, dearth, plenty, as appears by those histories of
Thucydides, Livius, Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with many others,
that are full of their wonderful stratagems.' They formerly devoted
themselves, each one, to the service of particular individuals as
familiar demons, 'private spirits.' Numa, Socrates, and many
others were indebted to their _Genius_. The power of the devil is
not limited to the body. 'Many think he can work upon the body,
but not upon the mind. But experience pronounceth otherwise, that
he can work both upon body and mind. Tertullian is of this
opinion.'

The causes and inducements of 'possession' are many. One writer
affirms that 'the devil being a slender, incomprehensible spirit
can easily insinuate and wind himself into human bodies, and
cunningly couched in our bowels, vitiate our healths, terrify our
souls with fearful dreams, and shake our minds with furies. They
go in and out of our bodies as bees do in a hive, and so provoke
and tempt us as they perceive our temperature inclined of itself
and most apt to be deluded.... Agrippa and Lavater are persuaded
that this humour [the melancholy] invites the devil into it,
wheresoever it is in extremity, and, of all other, melancholy
persons are most subject to diabolical temptations and illusions,
and most apt to entertain them, and the devil best able to work
upon them. 'But whether,' declares Burton, 'by obsession, or