d claws seeming to grasp the soil (Fig. 6). The
gestures vary; the right arm is sometimes stretched downwards at full
length, sometimes bent at the elbow, but the combination of forms, the
character of the figure and its intention is always the same. We shall
encounter this type again when we come to speak of Cappadocia.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Demons; from the palace of Assurbanipal at
Kouyundjik. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

This belief in spirits is the second phase that the primitive religion,
which we studied in Egypt under the name of _fetishism_ or _animism_, has
to pass through.[86] In the beginning mere existence is confounded with
life. All things are credited with a soul like that felt by man within
himself. Such lifeless objects as stones and mountains, trees and rivers,
are worshipped; so too are both useful and noxious animals.[87] Childish as
it seems to us the worship of spirits is at least an advance upon this. It
presupposes a certain power of reflection and abstraction by which men were
led to conclude that intelligence and will are not necessarily bound up
with a body that can be seen and touched. Life has been mobilized, if we
may use such a phrase, and thus we arrive at _polydemonism_; by which we
mean the theory that partitions the government of the world among a crowd
of genii, who, though often at war among themselves, are always more
powerful than man, and may do him much harm unless he succeeds in winning
their help and good will.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Demons. Louvre.]

The worship of stars is but one form of this religious conception. The
great luminaries of night and day were of course invested with life and
power by men who felt themselves in such complete dependence upon them.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Eagle-headed divinity, from Nimroud. Louvre.
Alabaster. Height forty inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

So far as we can judge, the primitive form of fetishism left but feeble
traces in the religion of civilized Chaldaea and Assyria. The signs are few
of that worship of sacred stones which played such an important part among
the Semites of the west, and even among the Greeks,[88] neither can we find
that either fear or gratitude ever led to the worship of animals, the
docile helpers or the redoubtable enemies of man, in the same degree as it
did in Egypt. And yet Chaldaea and Assyria followed the example of Egypt in
mixing up the forms of men with those of animal