f those Turanian races in Asiatic Russia who
profess what is called _chamanism_, and from the condition of most of the
negro tribes and Polynesian islanders. Among all these people, who still
remain in a mental condition from which the rest of the species has long
escaped, we find the highest places occupied by priest-magicians. Now and
then popular fury makes them pay cruelly for the ill-success of their
conjurations, but as a rule their persons and the illimitable power
ascribed to them inspire nothing but abject fear.

Fear is, indeed, the ruling sentiment in all religions in which a belief in
spirits finds a place. A man can never be sure that, in spite of all his
precautions, he has not incurred the displeasure of such exacting and
capricious masters. Some condition of the bargain which is being
perpetually driven with protectors who give nothing for nothing, may have
been unwittingly omitted. "The spirits and their worshippers are equally
selfish. As a general rule, the mischievous spirits receive more homage
than the good ones; those who are believed to live close at hand are more
dreaded than those at a distance; those to whom some special _role_ is
assigned are considered more important than spirits with a wider but less
definite authority."[85]

There were, of course, moments when men turned with gratitude towards the
hidden benefactor to whom they believed themselves indebted for some
unhoped-for cure or unexpected success, when joy and confidence moved their
hearts at the thought of the efficacious protection they had secured
against future ills; but such moments were few and short. The habitual
feeling was one of disquietude, we might almost say of terror, so that when
the imagination endeavoured to give concrete forms to the beings in
question, it figured them rather as objects of fear than love. The day
arrived for art to attempt the material realization of the dreams which
until then had been dimly seen in sleep or in the still more confused
visions of the waking hours, and for this hideous and threatening features
were naturally chosen. It is thus that the numerous figures of demons found
in Chaldaea and Assyria, sometimes in the bas-reliefs, sometimes in the
shape of small bronzes and terra-cottas, are accounted for. A human body is
crowned with the head of an angry lion, with dog's ears and a horse's mane;
the hands brandish long poignards, the feet are replaced by those of a bird
of prey, the extende