I've been reading Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and his assessment of the prophet Mohammed makes me wonder about some of the religious personages with whom we have to deal. It possess the question whether or not a religious leader or founder must be categorized as either good or evil, or if there is a gray area on which we cannot be quite precise.
Without saying too much, Gibbon found it necessary to address the founding of Islam because this led to the fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Empire long after the Western Empire had collapsed. Nor do I understand what Gibbon means by the "daemon of Socrates" - though I do know that in classical Greek the word daimon does not necessarily have the negative connotation that it does in NT Greek.
The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object, would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestions of the understanding or the fancy, would be felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labour of thought would expire in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an angel of God. From enthusiasm to imposture, the step is perilous and slippery: the daemon of Socrates affords a memorable instance, how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud.