=4. Worship of Animals.=--Of the worship of animals we have
comparatively little evidence in Roman religion, though we may perhaps
detect it in a portion of the mysterious ritual of the Lupercalia,
where the Luperci dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed
goats and smeared their faces with the blood, thus symbolically trying
to bring themselves into communion with the sacred animal. We may
recognise it too in the association of particular animals with
divinities, such as the sacred wolf and woodpecker of Mars, but on the
whole we may doubt whether the worship of animals ever played so
prominent a part in Roman religion as the cult of other natural
objects.

=5. Animism.=--Such are some of the survivals of very early stages of
religious custom which still kept their place in the developed religion
of Rome, but by far the most important element in it, which might
indeed be described as its 'immediate antecedent,' is the state of
religious feeling to which anthropologists have given the name of
'Animism.' As far as we can follow the development of early religions,
this attitude of mind seems to be the direct outcome of the failure of
magic. Primitive man begins to see that neither he nor his magicians
really possess that occult control over the forces of nature which was
the supposed basis of magic: the charm fails, the spell does not
produce the rain and when he looks for the cause, he can only argue
that these things must be in the hands of some power higher than his
own. The world then and its various familiar objects become for him
peopled with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and
his success in life and its various operations depends on the degree in
which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their
co-operation. If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit
who controls it, if he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must by