DEMONOLOGY. The branch of comparative religion which concerns itself with beliefs re garding evil spirits or demons. The worship of demons is one of the most widespread of all religious phenomena. It may even be considered one of the chief sources of primitive religion. Beside the beneficent godlings or ghosts there exists a far greater number of maleficent who are either divinities or supernaturalized spirits. While the beneficent deities may. and often do, receive expressions of gratitude for past bounties and prayers for continued blessings in the future from their worshipers. it is the demon or maleficent or ghost who re ceives the greater amount of human tribute. The reason for this religious attitude in primitive society is not far to seek. The beneficent deity is. in the eyes of early man. an easy-going being who dispenses blessings as a matter of course, and lie may therefore be trusted to con tinue on in his routine goodness. An occasional sacrifice as a token of gratitude or as an in ducement to confer greater boons. or to recom mence an interrupted course of beneficence, is quite suflieient for him. His blessings may even be overlooked in view of their quiet and orderly action, or be forgotten altogether on account of the number of painful events which befall man. With the demon things are altogether different. His power, which lie constantly exerts for harm ful ends, must be met with continued propitia tion. in the shape of prayer or sacrifice. Further more. the maligmaney of the demon cannot be overlooked, and i- far more prominent to the primitive mind than benefieence• which. as al ready suggested, frequently passes unnoticed. The worship of demons is in general dire•tly pro portionate to the lowness of cult. As religion develops in any community or tribe. the demon's scope of malignancy is cireumscribed accordingly, while the degree of worship paid to beneficent ghosts and godlings constantly increases.
Demons comprise several classes and occur in a vast variety of forms. The two main division: are, as in the ease of beneficent divinities, either superhuman. being personifications of the powers
of Nature, or what may be termed posthuman, being ghosts of dead ancestors, espeeialiy of the chiets, or of men who had been otherwise eon spicuous in the community during life. These two classes of superhuman and posthuman god lings and demons frequently overlap, and the dividing line between them must be regarded as a shifting boundary. Here in many cases syn cretism, or the blending Of divinities originally distMet into one, may be the SOLlree of confusion. In such a divinity as the Greek Apollo. for in stance, might be syncretized a beneficent godling of light, a ghost of some early member of a tribe conspicuous for musical ability, and the malef icent godling of light, who causes death and damage as in sunstroke. it is, in consequence. sometimes hard to tell to which division a given godling or demon belongs. Such an uncertainty is not in itself a proof of error of method. It is probably incorrect to assume an excessively nice discrimination in this regard among primitive mankind, although there is a marked tendency to elevate posthuman into superhuman divinities either beneficent or maleficent, while the change of nature deities into ghosts is practically un known. On the other hand. the attempt to re duce all godlings and demons to the single cate gory either of nature deities or of ghosts seems an unscientific one in its fundamental principle. There may even be other factors in the origin of belief in divinities, and it is an error to assume that the primitive is necessarily simple. Further more, the functions of the beneficent and 'ma leficent deities, like the classification of super human and posthuman, are frequently fused. Thus the fire-godling may be beneficent, as in the hearth-fire, or maleficent, a., in the conflagration of a village. Again. a malignant deity may. by proper sacrifices and ritual. become benignant to an individual or tribe, as in an invocation to smallpox to befall one's enemies.