from the steaming marshes. They controlled also the lives of men and
women. The good spirits were the source of luck. The bad spirits
caused misfortunes, and were ever seeking to work evil against the
Babylonian. Darkness was peopled by demons and ghosts of the dead. The
spirits of disease were ever lying in wait to clutch him with cruel
invisible hands.

Some modern writers, who are too prone to regard ancient peoples from
a twentieth-century point of view, express grave doubts as to whether
"intelligent Babylonians" really believed that spirits came down in
the rain and entered the soil to rise up before men's eyes as stalks
of barley or wheat. There is no reason for supposing that they thought
otherwise. The early folks based their theories on the accumulated
knowledge of their age. They knew nothing regarding the composition of
water or the atmosphere, of the cause of thunder and lightning, or of
the chemical changes effected in soils by the action of bacteria. They
attributed all natural phenomena to the operations of spirits or gods.
In believing that certain demons caused certain diseases, they may be
said to have achieved distinct progress, for they anticipated the germ
theory. They made discoveries, too, which have been approved and
elaborated in later times when they lit sacred fires, bathed in sacred
waters, and used oils and herbs to charm away spirits of pestilence.
Indeed, many folk cures, which were originally associated with magical
ceremonies, are still practised in our own day. They were found to be
effective by early observers, although they were unable to explain why
and how cures were accomplished, like modern scientific investigators.

In peopling the Universe with spirits, the Babylonians, like other
ancient folks, betrayed that tendency to symbolize everything which
has ever appealed to the human mind. Our painters and poets and
sculptors are greatest when they symbolize their ideals and ideas and
impressions, and by so doing make us respond to their moods. Their
"beauty and their terror are sublime". But what may seem poetic to us,
was invariably a grim reality to the Babylonians. The statue or
picture was not merely a work of art but a manifestation of the god or
demon. As has been said, they believed that the spirit of the god
inhabited the idol; the frown of the brazen image was the frown of the
wicked demon. They entertained as much dread of the winged and
human-headed bulls guarding the e