the demons of darkness. There is essentially no distinction to
the mind of the primitive man between the Panis, who steal
Indra's bright cows and keep them in a dark cavern all night,
and the throttling snake Ahi or Echidna, who imprisons the
waters in the stronghold of the thunder-cloud and covers the
earth with a short-lived darkness. And so the poisoned arrows
of Bellerophon, which slay the storm-dragon, differ in no
essential respect from the shafts with which Odysseus
slaughters the night-demons who have for ten long hours beset
his mansion. Thus the divining-rod, representing as it does
the weapon of the god of day, comes legitimately enough by its
function of detecting and avenging crime.

But the lightning not only reveals strange treasures and gives
water to the thirsty land and makes plain what is doing under
cover of darkness; it also sometimes kills, benumbs, or
paralyzes. Thus the head of the Gorgon Medusa turns into stone
those who look upon it. Thus the ointment of the dervise, in
the tale of Baba Abdallah, not only reveals all the treasures
of the earth, but instantly thereafter blinds the unhappy man
who tests its powers. And thus the hand of glory, which bursts
open bars and bolts, benumbs also those who happen to be near
it. Indeed, few of the favoured mortals who were allowed to
visit the caverns opened by sesame or the luck-flower, escaped
without disaster. The monkish tale of "The Clerk and the
Image," in which the primeval mythical features are curiously
distorted, well illustrates this point.

In the city of Rome there formerly stood an image with its
right hand extended and on its forefinger the words "strike