The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

274 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

of controlling them. The spells and charms which have been
handed down from the past are formed into a system, and
the spirits themselves are classified and defined, while special
functions are assigned to them. The old unorganised animism
passes into an organised shamanism, such as still prevails among
certain Siberian tribes. The sorcerer is on the high road to
becoming a priest.
Between the sorcerer and the priest, however, there is a gulf
too wide to be spanned. The religious conceptions presupposed
by them differ in kind as well as in degree. The nature of
the superhuman beings by whom man is surrounded, and the
relations which he bears to them, are essentially different in the
two cases. The priest may also be a sorcerer, but the sorcerer
cannot be a priest.
Can shamanism develop naturally into theism, and the sorcerer
into the priest? Or is there need of foreign influences and of
contact with other ideas and religious beliefs? I should myself
be inclined to adopt the second alternative. Theism may absorb
shamanism, and the priest throw the ægis of his authority over
the sorcerer, but the natural development of the one into the
other is contrary to the facts of psychology as well as to those of
[299] history. The evolution of a god out of the shaman's ghost may be
conceivable, but no evidence for it exists. The superstitions and
beliefs of shamanism linger, indeed, under a theistic religion, and
the polytheism of Babylonia was no exception to the rule. Up to
the last the magician flourished there, and the spells he worked
were recognised by the religion of the State. But for all that they
stood outside the religion of the State, harmonising with it just as
little as the superstitions of popular folk-lore harmonise with the
religion we profess. No one would assert that the Christianity of
to-day has grown out of beliefs like that in the vampire which still
holds such sway in some of the Christian countries of Europe;
and there is just as little reason for asserting that the vampire of
the primitive Sumerian developed into a Babylonian deity. They