study of early Roman religion is "animism."

Not much more than a quarter of a century ago the word "animism" began
to be used to describe that particular phase of the psychological
condition of primitive peoples by which they believe that a spirit
(_anima_) resides in everything, material and immaterial. This spirit is
generally closely associated with the thing itself, sometimes actually
identified with it. When it is thought of as distinct from the thing, it
is supposed to have the form of the thing, to be in a word its "double."
These doubles exercise an influence, often for evil, over the thing, and
it is expedient and necessary therefore that they should be propitiated
so that their evil influence may be removed and the thing itself may
prosper. These doubles are not as yet gods, they are merely powers,
potentialities, but in the course of time they develop into gods. The
first step in this direction is the obtaining of a _name_, a name the
knowledge of which gives a certain control over the power to him who
knows it. Finally these powers equipped with a name begin to take on
personal characteristics, to be thought of as individuals, and finally
represented under the form of men.

It cannot be shown that all the gods of Rome originated in this way, but
certainly many of them did, and it is not impossible that they all did;
and this theory of their origin explains better than any other theory
certain habits of thought which the early Romans cherished in regard to
their gods. At the time when our knowledge of Roman religion begins,
Rome is in possession of a great many gods, but very few of them are
much more than names for powers. They are none of them personal enough
to be connected together in myths. And this is the very simple reason
why there was no such thing as a native Roman mythology, a blank in
Rome's early development which many modern writers have refused to
admit, taking upon themselves the unnecessary trouble of positing an
original mythology later lost. The gods of early Rome were neither
married nor given in marriage; they had no children or grandchildren and
there were no divine genealogies. Instead they were thought of
occasionally as more or less individual powers, but usually as masses of
potentialities, grouped together for convenience as the "gods of the
country," the "gods of the storeroom," the "gods of the dead," etc. Even
when they were conceived of as somewhat individual, they were usually