ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS. 177 



was also, and must have been, an overcurrent of reality. 

 They may have called on their gods to help them 

 before a battle — but during the tug of war they relied 

 upon their swords, and slings, and maces, and lances — 

 upon their bows and arrows, their chariots, and their 

 own muscles, to do the work. The priests, poets, and 

 artists, might be left to deal with the myths ; but the 

 warriors had to deal with the reality of existence. They 

 knew well enough that there must be no nonsense about 

 tJiat. To kill and be killed makes things a bit too real. 

 Eighteen centuries of religious evolution have done 

 little to eradicate these superstitions. On the contrary 

 they have been rivetted further and further into the 

 minds of the ignorant, with this difference : that the 

 change of soil and surroundings, and change of the 

 idiosyncrasy of the people adopting them, have altered 

 their forms and the legends attached to them. For- 

 tunately with the commencement of the Christian era 

 the seed of a ' moral philosophy ' was sown, which has 

 germinated and will grow, and work its way, in spite 

 of all these fantastic creations and impediments of the 

 human mind — creations not unknown to doctors who 

 deal with the insane. They know that not infrequently 

 a brisk purgative, or the restoration of a natural 

 secretion, does wonders in removing the invisible spirits 

 and other cobwebs from the cerebral grey matter of 



the patient. 



12 



