ing. In each of these
cases, the first principle is found operating, ever augmenting the
ranks; monodiabolism being as impossible as monotheism; and hence the
importance of fully establishing that proposition.

19. (iii.) The last and most important of these principles is the
tendency of all theological systems to absorb into themselves the
deities extraneous to themselves, not as gods, but as inferior, or even
evil, spirits. The actual existence of the foreign deity is not for a
moment disputed, the presumption in favour of innumerable spiritual
agencies being far too strong to allow the possibility of such a doubt;
but just as the alien is looked upon as an inferior being, created
chiefly for the use and benefit of the chosen people--and what nation is
not, if its opinion of itself may be relied upon, a chosen people?--so
the god the alien worships is a spirit of inferior power and capacity,
and can be recognized solely as occupying a position subordinate to that
of the gods of the land.

This principle has such an important influence in the elaboration of the
belief in demons, that it is worth while to illustrate the generality of
its application.

20. In the Greek system of theology we find in the first place a number
of deities of varying importance and power, whose special functions are
defined with some distinctness; and then, below these, an innumerable
band of spirits, the souls of the departed--probably the relics of an
earlier pure ancestor-worship--who still interest themselves in the
inhabitants of this world. These [Greek: daimones] were certainly
accredited with supernatural power, and were not of necessity either
good or evil in their influence or action. It was to this second class
that foreign deities were assimilated. They found it impossible,
however, to retain even this humble position. The ceremonies of their
worship, and the language in which those ceremonies were performed, were
strange to the inhabitants of the land in which the acclimatization was
attempted; and the incomprehensible is first suspected, then loathed. It
is not surprising, then, that the new-comers soon fell into the ranks of
purely evil spirits, and that those who persisted in exercising their
rites were stigmatized as devil-worshippers, or magicians.

But in process of time this polytheistic system became pre-eminently
unsatisfactory to the thoughtful men whom Greece produced in such
numbers. The tendency towards monotheism