a community, and not as so many
individual worshippers, offering separate prayers, that first
approaches the community's god. The existence of the individual
worshipper, as an individual is not denied, it is simply unknown, or
rather not realised by the community. But its stirrings are felt in
the individual himself: he is conscious of desires which are other
than those of the community, and the fulfilment of which forms no
part of the community's prayers to the community's god. His
self-consciousness, his consciousness of himself as contrasted with
the community, is fostered by the growth of such desires. For the
fulfilment of some of them, those which are manifestly anti-social,
he must turn to his fetish, or rely upon the power of magic. Even for
the fulfilment of those of his desires which are not felt to be
anti-social, but which find no place in the prayers of the community,
he must rely on some other power than that of the god of the
community; and it is in spells, therefore, that he continues to trust
for the fulfilment of these innocent desires, inasmuch as the prayers
of the community do not include them.

The existence, in the individual, of desires, other than those of the
community, wakes the individual to some consciousness of his
individual existence. The effort to secure the fulfilment of those
desires increases still further his self-consciousness, for he resorts
to powers which are not exercised solely in the interests of the
community, as are the powers of the community's god. But his
increasing self-consciousness cannot and does not fail to modify his
character and action as a worshipper of the community's gods. It
modifies his relation to the community's gods in this sense, viz. that
he appears before them not merely as a member of the community
undistinguished from other members, but as an individual conscious to
some extent of his individuality. He continues to take part in the
worship of the gods, but he comes to it conscious of wishes of his own
which may become petitions to the god, so far as they are not felt to
be inconsistent with the good of the community.

Of this stage we have ample evidence afforded by the cuneiform
inscriptions of Assyria. Spells employed to the hurt of any worshipper
of the gods are spells against which the worshipper may properly
appeal to the gods for protection. A god is essentially the protector
of his worshippers, and he protects each as well as all of them. Ea