polytheistic myth itself takes a step in the direction of transcending this limitation when it here also transfers the conditions of the human order to the divine world, and creates for the latter a monarch, a supreme deity ruling over gods and men. But this very projection of human relations into the divine realm prevents the chief deity from being an unlimited ruler. On the one hand, he shares authority with a deliberative assembly consisting of the remaining gods; on the other hand, even behind him there lurk those demoniacal powers which, to a certain extent, continued to assert themselves even after they had been superseded by the gods. For here also it holds true that whatever lives in folk-belief must retain a foundation in myth. The advent of gods nowhere led to the complete banishment of demons. What occurred was that, due to the power of the gods, certain of the demons likewise developed into mighty forces of destiny, though continuing to remain impersonal. Thus, the god possesses three characteristics: a special dwelling-place, immortality, and a superhuman, though at the same time a human, personality. Leaving out of regard the tribute exacted even of the gods by the last-mentioned of these characteristics, human nature, we have before us the marks which distinguish the god both from the demon and from the hero. The demon, however powerful he may be, lacks the attribute of personality; the hero, as thoroughly human, shares the universal lot of man as regards dwelling-place, length of life, and liability to sickness and death. This places the god midway between the demon and the hero, though, of course, by combining the attributes of both, he is really exalted above them. The demon, in the sense in which the Greeks employed this term, is a fundamental element in the development of all mythologies. There can be no doubt, moreover, that demons appeared far earlier than gods, if we exclude from among the latter those indefinite and transitory personifications of natural phenomena that have wrongly been classed with them--such personifications as those of rocks, hills, clouds, stars, etc., which were widely current even among peoples of nature. According to a belief which has not entirely disappeared even among cultural peoples, the soul leaves the corpse in the form of a demon; the wandering ghost is a demon; demons dwell in the depths, in the neighbourhood of streams, in solitary ravines, in forests and fields, upon and beneath the earth. They are usually threatening, though sometimes beneficent, powers. In every instance, however, they are absolutely impersonal embodiments of the emotions of fear and hope, and it is these emotions, under the assimilative influences of impressions of external nature, that have given rise to them. Thus, demons are usually mundane beings, or, at any rate, have their abode near the surface of the earth; with few exceptions, the most distant realm which they occupy is that of