arranged with the devils by that previous understanding in the
CHAP. XXIY.] DEMONIACAL OrJGIN OF SOr.CEr.Y. 61 from the stars wliicli God created and ordained, men liave drawn lying omens of their own fancy, so also from things that are born, or in any other way come into existence under the government of God's providence, if there chance only to be something unusual in the occurrence,—as when a mule brings forth young, or an object is struck by lightning,—men have frequently drawn omens by conjectures of their own, and have committed them to writing, as if they had drawn them by rule.
Chap. xxiv. The intercourse and agreement with demons wlilch superstitious observances maintain.
37. And all these omens are of force just so far as has been arranged with the devils by that previous understanding in the mind which is, as it were, the common language, but they are all full of hurtful curiosity, torturing anxiety, and deadly slavery. For it was not because they had meaning that they were attended to, but it was by attending to and marking them that they came to have meaning. And so they are made different for different people, according to their several notions and prejudices. For those spirits which are bent upon deceiving, take care to provide for each person the same sort of omens as they see his own conjectures and preconceptions have already entangled him in. For, to take an illustration, the same figure of the letter X, which is made in the shape of a cross, means one thinfjj amonothe Greeks and another amoncj the Latins, not by nature, but by agreement and pre-arrangement as to its signification ; and so, any one who knows both lanf]jua£jes uses this letter in a different sense when writincj to a Greek from that in which he uses it when writing to a
Latin. And the same sound, heta, which is the name of a letter among the Greeks, is the name of a vegetable among the
Latins ; and when I say, lege, these two syllables mean one thing to a Greekand^another to a Latin. Now, just as all these signs affect the mind according to the arrangements of the community in which each man lives, and affect different men's minds differently, because these arrangements are different ; and as, further, men did not agree upon them as signs because they were already significant, but on the contrary they are now significant because men have agreed upon