s attitude to the deity, the sacrifices being meant to increase
his power to benefit the community, and the prayers to diminish such
inclination as he might have to damage it; but that there are in these
certain survivals of the age of magic, which are, however, only formal,
and have lost their original significance. I found some curious
examples of such survivals in the rite of _devotio_, and in vows
generally a somewhat lower type of method in dealing with the
supernatural. But, on the other hand, the forms of _lustratio_, at the
bottom of which seems to lie the idea of getting rid of evil spirits and
influences, present very beautiful examples of what we may really call
religious ceremony.

There was, then, in this highly-organised religion of the city-state, in
some ways at least, a great advance. But in spite of this gain, it had
serious drawbacks. Most prominent among these was the fact that it was
the religion of the State as a whole, and not of the individual or the
family. Religion, I think we may safely say, had placed a certain
consecration upon the simple life of the family, which was, in fact, the
life of the individual; for the essence of religion in all stages of
civilisation lies in the feeling of the individual that his own life,
his bodily and mental welfare, is dependent on the Divine as he and his
regard it. But to what extent can it be said that religion so
consecrated the life of the State as to enable each individual in his
family group to feel that consecration more vividly? That would have
constituted a real advance in religious development; that was the
result, if I am not mistaken, of the religion of the Jewish State, which
with all the force of a powerful hierarchical authority addressed its
precepts to the mind and will of the individual. But at Rome, though the
earliest traces and traditions of law show a certain consecration of
morality, inasmuch as the criminal is made over as a kind of
propitiatory sacrifice to the deity whom he has offended, yet in the
ordinary course of life, so far as I can discern, the individual was
left very much where he was, before the State arose, in his relation to
the Divine.

In no other ancient State that we know of did the citizen so entirely
resign the regulation of all his dealings with the State's gods to the
constituted authorities set over him. His obligatory part in the
religious ritual of the State was simply _nil_, and all his religious
duty on da