Lecture II. Primitive Animism. 269
to be suppressed by force, as in ancient Israel; but for all that
it stood outside the official faith, and embodied principles and
conceptions which could be harmonised but imperfectly with the
higher and more enlightened ideas of the historical period. We
may find in the magical texts survivals from the primeval age of
animism, if only we know how to interpret them rightly, for the
religious conceptions of a later age we shall look in vain. They
offer us magic and not religion, the wizard or witch and not the
priest.
Such, then, are the reasons why it is impossible for the present
to describe the psychology of the Babylonians with the same [293]
accuracy and fulness as that of the Egyptians, or to trace its
history with the same detail. The materials are wanting, and
probably we shall never have them in the same abundance as
in Egypt. But one thing is clear. Behind the polytheistic view
of the human spirit which prevailed in later times, there lay an
animistic view which closely resembled the primitive Egyptian
doctrine of the Ka. The animistic view passed away with the rise
of Semitic supremacy and the deification of man, and to discover
and define it must be largely a matter of inference. The doctrine
of the double was superseded by the doctrine of the soul—that
is to say, of an immortal element which after death was reunited
with the gods. The Zi, with the Lil and the Ekimmu, had to make
way for a higher and purer conception of the spirit of man. The
old names, indeed, still remained, but more and more emptied
of their earlier meaning, or banished to the outer darkness of
the magician and witch. The water and food that once served to
nourish the ghost in the world below, became offerings to the
dead man, and to the gods under whose protection he continued
to be.“All the furniture that befitteth the grave,”says an Assyrian
king,“the due right of his sovereignty, I displayed before the
sun-god, and beside the father who begat me I set them in the
grave. Gifts unto the princes, even the spirits of earth, and unto