efore the
separation, but not at all that the thing was deified or that the name
was the name of a god at that time. We must therefore be content to
begin our study of religion much more humbly and at a much later period.

In fact we cannot go back appreciably before the dawn of political
history, but there are certain considerations which enable us at least
to understand the phenomena of the dawn itself, those survivals in
culture which loom up in the twilight and the understanding of which
gives us a fair start in our historical development. For this knowledge
we are indebted to the so-called "anthropological" method, which is
based on the assumption that mankind is essentially uniform, and that
this essential uniformity justifies us in drawing inferences about very
ancient thought from the very primitive thought of the barbarous and
savage peoples of our own day. At first sight the weakness of this
contention is more apparent than its strength, and it is easy to show
that the prehistoric primitive culture of a people destined to
civilisation is one thing, and the retarded primitive culture of modern
tribes stunted in their growth is quite another thing, so that, as has
so often been said, the two bear a relation to each other not unlike
that of a healthy young child to a full-grown idiot. And yet there is a
decided resemblance between the child and the idiot, and whether
prehistoric or retarded, primitive culture shows everywhere strong
likeness, and the method is productive of good if we confine our
reasoning backwards to those things in savage life which the two kinds
of primitive culture, the prehistoric and the retarded, have in common.
To do this however we must have some knowledge of the prehistoric, and
our modern retarded savage must be used merely to illumine certain
things which we see only in half-light; he must never be employed as a
lay-figure in sketching in those features of prehistoric life of which
we are totally in ignorance. It is peculiarly useful to the student of
Roman religion because he stands on the borderland and looking backwards
sees just enough dark shapes looming up behind him to crave more light.
For in many phases of early Roman religion there are present
characteristics which go back to old manners of thought, and these
manners of thought are not peculiar to the Romans but are found in many
primitive peoples of our own day. The greatest contribution which
anthropology has made to the