i return (continues the prefect of giphantia) to the elementary spirits. their constant abode in the air, always full of vapours and exhalations; in the sea, ever mixed with salts and earths; in the fire, perpetually used about a thousand heterogeneous bodies; in the earth, where all the other elements are blended together: this abode, i say, by degrees spoils the pure essence of the spirits, whose original nature is to be (as to their material substance) all fire, all air, or other unmixt element. this degradation has sometimes gone so far, as that by the mixture of the different elements, the spirits have acquired a 25sufficient consistence to render them visible. people have seen them in the fire and called them salamanders, and cyclops: they have seen them in the air and called them sylphs, zephyrs, aquilons: they have seen them in the water and called them sea-nymphs, naiads, nereids, tritons: they have seen them in caverns, desarts, woods, and have called them gnomes, sylvans, fauns, satyrs, &c.

from the astonishment caused by these apparitions, men sunk into fear, and fear begot superstition. to these, creatures like themselves, they erected altars which belong only to the creator. their imagination magnifying what they had seen, they soon formed a hierarchy of chimerical deities. the sun appeared to them a luminous chariot guided by 26apollo through the celestial plains; thunder, a fiery bolt darted by jupiter at the heads of the guilty: the ocean, a vast empire, where neptune ruled the waves: the bowels of the earth, the gloomy residence of pluto, where he gave laws to the pale and timorous ghosts: in a word, they filled the world with gods and goddesses. the earth itself became a deity.

when the elementary spirits perceived how apt their apparitions were to lead men into error, they took measures to be no longer visible: they devised a sort of refiner by which from time to time they get rid of all extraneous matter. from thence forward, no mortal eye has ever seen the least glimpse of these spirits.