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Definitions of madness change over time. From Antiquity through the Early Modern period, Melancholia was the predominant form of mental illness, thought to be caused by an imbalance in the bodily humors, resulting in an excess of black bile. The disturbed physiology adversely affected the imagination, which, with memory and intellect, was one of the three functions of the soul. Only gradually did imagination come to be identified with deliberate creativity: from about 1400 to 1800, there were two stereotypical victims of melancholia: male intellectuals and female witches. The disruption of society by witch-hunting was even more radical than the rise of the "man of genius." At stake were definitions of psychology ("science of the soul") and reality (whether witches and demons interacted "in the body" or only "in the imagination"). Readings from Plato to Freud.