The Assyrian influence however was only one factor, and a minor factor at that, in maintaining the belief in countless spirits that occupied a place of more or less importance by the side of the great and lesser gods. That conservatism which is a distinguishing trait of the popular forms of religion everywhere, served to keep alive the view that all the acts of man, his moods, the accidents that befell him, were under the control of visible or invisible powers. The development of a pantheon, graded and more or less regulated under the guidance of the Babylonian schoolmen, did not drive the old animistic views out of existence. In the religious literature, and more especially in those parts of it which reflect the popular forms of thought, the unorganized mass of spirits maintain an undisputed sway. In the incantation texts, which will be discussed at length in a subsequent chapter, as well as in other sections of Babylonian literature embodying both the primitive and the advanced views of the Babylonians regarding the origin of the universe, its subdivisions, and its order of development, and, thirdly, in the legends and epics, hundreds of spirits are introduced, to which some definite function or functions were assigned. In many, indeed in the majority of cases, the precise character of these functions still escapes us. The material at our disposal is as yet inadequate for any satisfactory treatment of this phase of Babylonian belief, and we must content ourselves for the present with some generalizations, or at the most with some broad classifications. Besides the texts themselves, we have proper names containing a spirit as an element, and also lists of those spirits prepared by the schoolmen on the basis of the texts. When, as sometimes happens, these lists contain explanatory comments on the spirits enumerated, we are able to take some steps forward in our knowledge of the subject.