The Semitic scholar, R. H. Harper, writes of the Assyrians and Babylonians as follows: “There is no place in the universe where evil spirits can not penetrate. Every manner of evil and disaster is ascribed to them, from pestilence, fever, and the scorching wind of the desert, down to the trifles of life,--a quarrel, a headache, a broken dish, or a bad dream. They walk the street, slip into the door, get into the food, in short, are everywhere, and the danger from their presence is always imminent.... Corresponding to a widespread belief in demons was a similar belief in witchcraft. It was not at all strange that the demons, who worked in every possible corner of the universe, should take possession of human beings....” The tablets excavated in the imperial library of Ashurbanipal show the spirit of the people even of the highest classes debased with delusions and religious hallucinations due to self-preservation and fear instinct, so dominant in man who, when common-sense departs from him, may be regarded as the _irrational animal par excellence_. We may give the following illustration taken from one of the many tablets of the Shurpu series: “The evil spirits like grass have covered the earth. To the four winds they spread brilliancy like fire, they send forth flames. The people living in dwellings they torment, their bodies they afflict. In city and country they bring moaning, small and great they make to lament. Man and woman they put in bonds, and fill with cries of woe. Man they fall upon and cover him like a garment. In heaven and earth like a tempest they rain; they rush on in pursuit. They fill him with poison, his hands they bind, his sides they crush.” According to the ancient rabbis, a man should not drink water by night, for thus he exposes himself to the Shavriri, demons of blindness. What then should he do if he is thirsty? If there be another man with him, let him rouse him up and say: “I am thirsty,” but if he be alone, let him tap upon the lid of the jug (to make the demon fancy there is some one with him), and addressing him by his own name, let him say: “Thy mother bid thee beware of the Shavriri, vriri, riri, ri.” Rashi, a mediaeval commentator, says that by this incantation the demon gradually contracts and vanishes as the sound of the word Shavriri decreases.