ing religions have constructed a great part of their own systems of faith. Probably not a single race or religion now exists which does not show distinct signs of its Turanian inheritance, although that inheritance may be recognized as the most superstitious part of its creed. The Chinese and the American Indians have preserved down to a recent period much of their primeval Turanian character, and in a striking degree, their primeval theory as to demons. The main feature of the Turanian creed was, that the whole of the Universe was peopled by innumerable spirits; that every man, woman, and child had at least two of such spirits; that the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars, each had its demon; that mountains, rivers, fountains, trees, clouds, winds, rain, heat, cold, each had its demon; that many of these had many demons each; that when the sun shone beneficently, this effect was produced by its good demon; when it parched up the land, producing drought and famine, it was the act of the sun's evil demon: that when it thundered and lightened, a war of the demons of the elements was going on. There were also demons of the day, and demons of the night; each fever and disease had its demon ; famine, drought, and every other scourge which visits suffering humanity, had its special presiding demon. Indeed, it may be said, that to every object, living or inanimate, of sufficient individuality to

receive a name, and to every abstraction which did receive a name, at the same time was attributed its demon. All these demons were of a permanent nature, and were assumed to have come into existence at the same time as the body or conception to which they were attached, and to have a commensurate duration; but besides all these, the world of demons was being perpetually recruited by human deaths, for it was a universal belief that the disembodied human soul became a demon as it separated from the body. Demons of this class have had attached to them characteristics as widely different as light is from darkness; but the true and original idea in the Turanian mind seems to have been, that disembodied souls were capable, under certain conditions, of becoming not only most powerful and exacting, but most malignant, if not satisfied in their own particular way. Hence the necessity for propitiating ancestral demons, and the introduction of the whole system of manes-worship, passing into sacrifices to the infernal powers for the dead, and masses for the repose of the soul. As Nature was most prolific and versatile in the production of forces out of which man created demons, so the fertile imagination of the human race has given to these demons a development, the ramifications of which could hardly be conceived, were the origin and history of that development not followed out and demonstrated. As

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the demons of the cosmic forces were identified with might, strength and magnitude, they in time passed into the stage of penates, giants, solar and other heroes; the demons of the trees, rivers, fountains and seas, passed into dryads, nymphs, syrens and mermaids; ancestral spirits assumed the form of lares, familiar spirits, guardian angels and patron saints; whilst in certain morbid forms they were hobgoblins, ghosts, brownies and bogies; the forests and fields, the waves and caves, teemed with satyrs, fauns, fairies, elves, trolls and dwarfs. Thus it came about that the people of the ancient classical periods, of the middle ages, and even of quite recent times, could well believe that, were their eyes open, like those of Elisha's companions of old, they would see the world, and every corner in it, the earth, the air, the heavens, the seas, and the abyss, peopled with legions of spiritual beings, each with his office and vocation, and his separate, personal and intelligent existence; and all influencing, in some form or another, the affairs of the human race, in every minute particular.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.'

We have hitherto been speaking of demons properly so called, as being spiritual beings immediately