Eudaimon

In Heathen days it was fancied that an Eudaimon or healing spirit lingered at the spot, and this idea was not confined to peasants or the illiterate, but it was fostered and stirred to active life by the wise men of the day.

In these days we ascribe the virtues of those wells, simply to the internal and external use of water; at least, the majority among us no longer believes, that such wells are efficacious because they are holy, although this was the ordinary creed of our ancestors, and not only of unprofessional people, for philosophers, like Van Helmont, expressed their belief in the presence of an Eudaimon, or benevolent spirit, in healing waters.

For meanwhile the Church had decided that all the classic influences, Eudaimons or Good Spirits as well as Kakodaimons or Bad Spirits were devils.

In the Egyptian, Grecian, and, above all, the Roman theogonies it is not always easily discernible whether the ‘spirits’ to which men appeal for help or success in their enterprises are good or evil, and Iamblichus and Porphyry exhibit a diverting confusion between angels and demons, good and evil spirits, eudaimons and kakodaimons.

Hesse refers, quite obviously, to his analysis and his self realisation, and one is reminded here also of his letters from Tübingen concerning the well disposed eudaimon and the ‘little man’ of his childhood.

“Ah, well, there are eudaimons, benevolent spirits, but in most cases these are thought to be guardian angels.”

This is precisely what Aristotle must say, given his account of change in Physics and elsewhere: it is possible for Dasein to become a Eudaimon because Dasein already is a eudaimon potentially.

There were eudaimons, beneficial spirits, and kakodaimons, malicious spirits. If one were accompanied by a eudaimon, a sort of guardian angel, then one’s life would go well; […]