Doubtless, beneath the bright anthropomorphic religion lurked a fear of ghosts and evil spirits, and the later days of Hellenic paganism were somewhat clouded with demonology. But the average Greek protected himself sufficiently by purification and easy conventional magic. He did not brood on the principle of evil or personify it as a great cosmic power, and therefore he would not naturally evolve a system of religious dualism, though the germs from which this might grow may be found in Orphic tradition and doctrine. Contrast this with the evidence from Egypt, Assyria, and {19} Persia. The Egyptian and Assyrian records bear strong impress of the prominence and power of the belief in evil spirits. The high gods of Assyria were continually being invoked and implored by the worshipper to save him from the demons, and one of these, Ira, a demon of pestilence, seems to have received actual worship; and much of Egyptian private ritual was protective magic against them. But nowhere did the power of evil assume such grand proportions as in the old Mazdean creed of Persia, and the dualism between the good and evil principle became here the foundation of a great religion that spread its influence wide through the West. The religion had its prophet, Zarathustra, in whose historic reality we ought not to doubt. In his system the faithful Mazdean is called upon to play his part in the struggle between Ahura-Mazda and Angra-Mainyu, and this struggle continues through the ages till in the final cataclysm the Daevas, or evil demons, will be overthrown. We note here that this faith includes the idea of a final Judgment, so familiar to Judaic and Christian thought, but scarcely to be found in the native Hellenic religion. Further, it should be observed that the Mazdean dualism between good and evil has nothing in common with the Platonic antithesis between mind and sense, or St. Paul’s between spirit and flesh, or with the hatred of the body that is expressed in Buddhism. The good Mazdean might regard his body as good and pure, and therefore he escaped, as by a different way did the Greek, from the tyranny of a morbid asceticism. Only he developed the doctrine of purity into a code more burdensome than can be found, I think, elsewhere. The ideas of ritual-purity on which he framed this code are found broadcast through the East and in Egypt, and appear {20} in the Hellenic religion also. The Greek, however, did not allow himself to be oppressed by his own cathartic system, but turned it to excellent service in the domain of law, as I have tried to show elsewhere.[20.1]