He was long foreshadowed, however, first by the animal ancestor (especially in so far as the latter brought blessings and good fortune), and then by the subsequent cult of human ancestors. But the figure of the hero is not completely developed until the human personality enters into the very forefront of mythological thought; then, through regular transitions, the value placed on personal characteristics is enhanced until the ideal of the hero is reached. Doubtless the hero may still incidentally be associated with the ancestor, yet personality as such has now come so to dominate the interest of the age that in comparison with it the genealogical feature is but secondary. Not so with the demon-idea. Though it has come down from very remote times and has assumed many forms as a result of varying cultural conditions, the demon has always remained a magic being, arousing now hope, now fear and terror. This was its nature up to the very time when the ideal of the hero arose. This new idea it then appropriated, just as it did, in earlier times, the ideas of a soul that survives the deceased, of the totem animal, of the ancestor, and of other mythological figures. The very nature of the demon has always been constituted by such incorporated elements. From this point of view, the god also is only a new form of demon. In its earlier forms, however, as spirit-demon, animal-demon, and, finally, even as ancestor-demon, the demon was an impersonal product of the emotions, and possessed characteristics which underwent constant transformations. When it became a hero, it for the first time rose to the level of a personal being. Through the enhancement of the qualities of the hero it was then elevated into the sphere of the superhuman. Thus it came to constitute a human ideal far transcending the hero. This accounts for the uniqueness of the god-conception, and for the fact that, though the god assumes the essential characteristics of the demon, the two are nevertheless more widely distinct than were any of the earlier forms of demon conceptions from those that anteceded them. The rise of the god-idea, therefore, ushers in a new epoch of religious development. Just because of the contrast between personal god and impersonal demon, this epoch may be designated as that of the _origin of religion_, in the narrower and proper sense of the word. The various forms of pure demon-belief are preparatory to religion; religion itself begins with the belief in gods. The relation which the belief in demons sustains to the belief in gods is another evidence that hero and god must be grouped together, for there can be no clearly marked temporal difference in the origin of these two ideals of personality. Just as soon as the figure of the human hero arises, it assimilates the demon-conception, which was already long in existence and which continually underwent changes as a result of the various ideas with which it came into contact. Alongside of the being that arose from