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.
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.
So far as we can judge, the primitive form of fetishism left but feeble traces in the religion of civilized Chaldæa 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 Chaldæa and Assyria followed the example of Egypt in mixing up the forms of men with those of animals in their sacred statues. This we know both from the texts and the figured monuments. But it was not only in the budding art of a primitive population that such combinations were employed, and it was not only the inferior genii that were represented in such singular fashion.