human nature. But when the first step towards polytheism has been taken, when once the tribe's worship has been finally divided between the totem and another deity—though this does not take place probably without many relapses, by the process of syncretism, into the old custom of a single sanctuary and a single totem to a single tribe-the development of polytheism is easy and rapid; the need for friendly relations with all the natural forces by which man's fortunes are or can be supposed to be affected is so great that one after another all are gradually brought within the circle of his worship. But this is a process which cannot take place without affecting the nature, character, and position of the gods. For instance, the original clan-god was omnipotent: the worshipper appealed to him in any and every need, with confidence that he could, if he so willed, save him. But when, by the fusion of several communities, the members of the new State found themselves the worshippers of several omnipotent gods, some adjustment of their relations was necessary. That adjustment often took the form of a division of labour, and we can see clearly in some cases how a god originally all-powerful would come to be a merely departmental god. In the view of early man war is a holy function before going into battle, sacrifice is offered to the clan-god, the warriors are consecrated to him and are placed under the taboos ordinarily imposed on those who are in direct and special communion with the clan-god. Whether the clan-god be an animal totem or a vegetation spirit, or what not, he is all-powerful, and only exercises this power of protecting his warriors by the way, so to speak. But if of several tribes uniting in a political federation one is distinguished for its success in war, the inference inevitably will be that its god has special powers of conferring victory in war; and the other clans federated with it will worship its god more especially and rather than their own in time of war. Thus a god who, like Mars, was admittedly in the beginning a vegetation spirit, may end by becoming the war-god of a nation. Again, the sacred trees 1 and sacred stream 2 of a holy place are habitually used as oracles; and if some sacred place for some reason or other gains repute as a place for 1 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 194. 2 Op. cit. 187.

oracles, the god of the spot may, like Apollo in Delphi, come to be specially the god of divination and of prophecy.

It may perhaps be thought that if Mars was, as is now generally admitted, originally a vegetation spirit, he must also originally have been a functional deity, and not an all-powerful god; and so, generally, that all gods were at first departmental or functional, and that the conception of omnipotence was only gradually built up in the history of religion. But on the hypothesis that vegetation spirits were plant totems, this is not so. That at a certain stage of development it was considered to be the special business of the Corn-mother, or Maize-mother, or Cotton-mother, to look after the growth of their respective plants, and see that they prospered, is not denied. The importance of the plants to man is quite sufficient reason for his requiring a supernatural power to tend them, and none was so proper as the spirit originally supposed to be immanent in them. And the same observation will apply to animals of economic importance. But obviously the case is different with plants and animals of no value to men for food or any other purpose: man has no interest in the multiplication of crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and insects, or plants and trees which he can neither eat nor otherwise make use of. When, then, he worships the supernatural beings immanent in such plants and animals—and he does adopt all of them as totems-the purpose of his worship is not to secure their multiplication, for he has no interest therein, and, consequently, the immanent deities must be worshipped because of their possession of supernatural powers other than purely functional. If the only thing the crocodile totem could do was to increase the number of crocodiles, there would be-to borrow a word from the Political Economist-a positive "disutility" in his worship. Nor would the utility of the butterfly, in that case, be sufficient to induce men to adopt it as a totem, as some tribes do. Now, the original wild ancestors of our domesticated plants and animals did not differ in any obvious way from other wild animals and plants: the savage could not foresee that the oyster would and the turtle would not come to be cultivated; and if he adopted them both as totems, it was not in order to eat them, for he adopts, in the same way, plants

and animals which he cannot eat, and moreover the totemplant or animal is precisely the species which he abstains from eating. In fine, he worshipped plant totems for the same reason as he worshipped animal totems, and he worshipped totems which eventually turned out to possess economic utility for the same reason as he worshipped those which eventually proved to have none; and that reason was that he believed them to be supernatural beings possessing the power to protect him from all dangers, and to confer on him all blessings. That eventually the prayers which he addressed to the Corn-spirit or Maize-spirit came to be mainly prayers for good crops, was due to the various causes which we have already suggested: the growth of polytheism led to a division of labour amongst deities, the economic importance of food-plants made their multiplication a matter of especial desire, and the spirit immanent in them, being their life, naturally came to be considered to be the spirit that made them grow. But even so there are clear traces enough in late times that the vegetation spirit, though mainly concerned with vegetation, continued to exercise other powers: the tree-spirit of the Lithuanians had control over rain and sunshine,1 and amongst the northern Europeans generally the vegetation spirit brought blessings of all kinds, and not merely prosperity to the crops.2 Therefore also the general supernatural powers exercised by Demeter, Dionysus, Chicomecoatl, etc., may have been inherited and not extended to them in late times on the analogy of the other gods of the pantheons to which they belonged.

But when once the conception of departmental deities had been developed by polytheism, it extended widely. The animistic belief that everything was a living being, and the root-conception of totemism, that things are united in kinds as men are united in kins, was combined with the new idea that the spirit immanent in any species of beings or class of things had the functional power of promoting the utility of that class. Hence a large number of new, minor deities, whose co-operation man must secure. That worship was necessary for this end was self-evident. That the worship

of the new deities should be modelled on that of the old was

inevitable. But to understand the difficulty in the way of extending the old rules of worship to cover the new instances, some explanation is required. In the earliest form of sacrifice a theophany of the totem-god was procured by dashing the blood of the totem-animal on the altar-stone: the victim was the god, the blood was the life, the spirit of the species to which the animal belonged. No invocation, therefore, was required, no naming the god was necessary; the god had no name, indeed, and the only god who could pass into the altar was the spirit immanent in the animal, that is to say, the totem-god of the clan. To this day, survivals of this state of things may be found: the Kureks at irregular times slaughter a reindeer or a dog, put its head on a pole facing east, and, mentioning no name, say, "This for Thee grant me a blessing." 1 But when polytheism grew up, when one clan worshipped several gods, it would be necessary to distinguish. Especially, when the same animal might be offered to different gods, would there be nothing to guarantee that the right god passed into the altar. Hence the advantage of having different names for the different gods, and the custom of invoking a god by his name before slaying the victim that was intended for him. Those who did not know the name of the god could not offer him a sacrifice, could not enter into communion with him, could not gain his ear for any prayer. Hence the profound and successful secrecy with which the name of the tutelary deity of Rome was guarded, that no foe might induce him. to abandon Rome. Finally, we may note that savages generally believe that knowledge of a man's name confers power over the man himself; a man's name-or, for that matter, a god's name is part of himself in the savage's opinion, and consequently, just as hanging clothes on a sacred tree places the wearer in contact with the divinity of the tree, just as writing a name on temple-walls puts the owner of the name in continual union with the deity of the temple, so for early men the knowledge, invocation, and vain repetition of the deity's name constitutes in itself an actual, if mystic, union with the deity named.

To return to our minor and departmental deities, of 1 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 109.

whom the Roman Di Indigetes are the most remarkable example, it is clear, first, that for the worship of these generic deities it was essential that their names should be known, and second, that, when known, the mere repetition of their names would be an act of worship sufficient for the purpose, though not, of course, excluding sacrifice as well, if it were deemed advisable. Hence in Rome the pontifices kept registers (indigitamenta) of the names of all these Di Indigetes. From what is said by writers quoting from or basing themselves on Varro, who had access to the indigitamenta, it seems probable that there were four classes of these functional deities: the first consisted of those indwelling in articles of food, clothing, and other necessaries of life, and the second of those in certain parts of houses (door, hinge, threshold, etc.); but the other two classes are the most interesting, because the di comprised in them are all immanent, not in material things, but in processes-the various processes, (1) of farming, (2) of human life-and they showed that the Roman had reached the conclusion that anything whatever to which a class-name could be given had a real existence, affording a sphere for the function of a spiritual being. Examples of Di Indigetes are the spirit of sowing (a satione Sator), harrowing (ab occatione deus Occator), dunging (a stercoratione Sterculinius), of doors (Forculus a foribus), hinges (Cardea a cardinibus), of the threshold (Limentinus), of talking (Locutius), of the cradle (Cunina), etc. The most probable derivation of the word indiges is from indu (cf. ěvdov and indu-perator = im-perator) and ag (the stem of agere), in the sense of the god that acts, manifests himself, or is immanent in a thing.

But though it is the Di Indigetes of Rome with which we are most familiar, it is not to be inferred that it was in Rome alone that polytheism worked with disintegrating effect, and produced these functional deities. We meet with them in every quarter of the globe. In Africa, the negro has "tutelary deities, each of which is for a special purpose. These also are inanimate objects, possessing indwelling spirits. One perhaps watches that no quarrel or division takes place," like the Latin Concordia, "another may watch over them when dancing or holding a festival, and a third may take