BABYLON AND PERSIA

ARYAN MYTHS. 39 ,for Chaldea, and still more to difference of race.Ifthe Spiritism or goblin-worship of early Shumir andAccad have at some time necessarily been the religionof mankind in general, as the crudest, rudimentarymanifestation of the religious instinct inborn in man,some races took the step to a higher spiritual levelearlier than others, while those purely Turanianpeople who remained uninfluenced by foreign cul¬tures have scarcely taken that step even yet.'* Ourearliest glimpse of the Aryas shows them to us atthe stage which may be called that of pure natureworship,as developed by the particular conditionsof land and clime under which they were placed, andthe life, half pastoral, half agricultural, which theyled. The beneficent Powers of Nature the bright.Heaven ; all-pervading Light ; Fire, as manifested inthelightning, or the flame on the altar and thehearth ; the Sun in all his many aspects ; the kindlymotherly Earth ;the 'Winds, the Waters, the lifegivingThunderstorm ; all these were by themadored and entreated, as divine beings, gods. Theharmful Powers, far fewer in number, principallyDarkness and Drought, were fiends or demons, tobe abhorred, denounced, and accursed, never propiti-^ated and herein lay one of the chief differences be¬tween Aryan conceptions and those of Turanian andCanaanitic races. In the ideas of these latter thePowers that do evil to man are to be conciliated andinclined to mercy by prayer and sacrifice ; in thoseof the former they must be fought and vanquished,a duty which naturally devolves on their adversaries: ,'* See " Story of Chaldea," Ch. Ill,, " Turanian Chaldea,"