Not so with the demon-idea. Though it has come down from very remote times and has assumed many forms as a result of varying cultural conditions, the demon has always remained a magic being, arousing now hope, now fear and terror. This was its nature up to the very time when the ideal of the hero arose. This new idea it then appropriated, just as it did, in earlier times, the ideas of a soul that survives the deceased, of the totem animal, of the ancestor, and of other mythological figures. The very nature of the demon has always been constituted by such incorporated elements. From this point of view, the god also is only a new form of demon. In its earlier forms, however, as spirit-demon, animal-demon, and, finally, even as ancestor-demon, the demon was an impersonal product of the emotions, and possessed characteristics which underwent constant transformations. When it became a hero, it for the first time rose to the level of a personal being. Through the enhancement of the qualities of the hero it was then elevated into the sphere of the superhuman. Thus it came to constitute a human ideal far transcending the hero. This accounts for the uniqueness of the god-conception, and for the fact that, though the god assumes the essential characteristics of the demon, the two are nevertheless more widely distinct than were any of the earlier forms of demon conceptions from those that anteceded them. The rise of the god-idea, therefore, ushers in a new epoch of religious development. Just because of the contrast between personal god and impersonal demon, this epoch may be designated as that of the _origin of religion_, in the narrower and proper sense of the word. The various forms of pure demon-belief are preparatory to religion; religion itself begins with the belief in gods. The relation which the belief in demons sustains to the belief in gods is another evidence that hero and god must be grouped together, for there can be no clearly marked temporal difference in the origin of these two ideals of personality. Just as soon as the figure of the human hero arises, it assimilates the demon-conception, which was already long in existence and which continually underwent changes as a result of the various ideas with which it came into contact. Alongside of the being that arose from this fusion, however, there continued also the hero in his purity, as well as the demon, whose various forms were at most crowded into the background by the appearance of the gods. To however great an extent, therefore, the age of heroes and gods may introduce a completely new spiritual movement that proves fundamental to all future culture and religion, it nevertheless also includes all the elements of previous development. These elements, moreover, are not merely present in forms that have been altered and in part completely changed by the processes of assimilation; side by side with such forms, there are always also the original elements, which may be traced back to the earliest beginnings of mythological thought. The dominant factor determining the character of this new age, however, is the _hero_. The ideal of human personality which the hero engenders in the folk consciousness conditions all further development, and especially the origin of the god. For this reason the 'age of heroes and gods' might also, and more briefly, be called the _heroic age_.