=2. Worship of Natural Objects.=--A very common feature in the early
development of religious consciousness is the worship of natural
objects--in the first place of the objects themselves and no more, but
later of a spirit indwelling in them. The distinction is no doubt in
individual cases a difficult one to make, and we find that among the
Romans the earlier worship of the object tends to give way to the cult
of the inhabiting spirit, but examples may be found which seem to
belong to the earlier stage. We have, for instance, the sacred stone
(_silex_) which was preserved in the temple of Iuppiter on the Capitol,
and was brought out to play a prominent part in the ceremony of
treaty-making. The fetial, who on that occasion represented the Roman
people, at the solemn moment of the oath-taking, struck the sacrificial
pig with the _silex_, saying as he did so, 'Do thou, Diespiter, strike
the Roman people as I strike this pig here to-day, and strike them the
more, as thou art greater and stronger.' Here no doubt the underlying
notion is not merely symbolical, but in origin the stone is itself the
god, an idea which later religion expressed in the cult-title specially
used in this connection, _Iuppiter Lapis_. So again, in all
probability, the _termini_ or boundary-stones between properties are in
origin the objects--though later only the site--of a yearly ritual at
the festival of the Terminalia on February the 23rd, and they are, as
it were, summed up in 'the god Terminus,' the great sacred
boundary-stone, which had its own shrine within the Capitoline temple,
because, according to the legend, 'the god' refused to budge even to
make room for Iuppiter. The same notion is most likely at the root of
the two great domestic cults of Vesta, 'the hearth,' and Ianus, 'the
door,' though a more spiritual idea was soon associated with them; we
may notice too in this connection the worship of springs, summed up in
the subsequent deity Fons, and of rivers, such as Volturnus, the