They were, indeed, cold and colourless conceptions as compared with the Greek gods of Olympus, whose warmth and colour is really that of human life, of human passions; but the one remarkable and interesting thing about these Roman and Italian numina is the life and force for good or evil which is the very essence of their being. The puzzling combinations we have just been studying are quite enough to illustrate this character. Moles, Virites, Nerio, and perhaps others too, seem to mean the strength or force inherent in the numen; Cerfius, or Cerus, as the Latins called it, Liber, Genius, all are best interpreted as meaning a functional or creative force. Jupiter is the sky or heaven itself, with all its manifestations of activity; Tellus is Mother Earth, full of active productive power. At the bottom of these cold and colourless conceptions there is thus a real idea of power, not supernatural but rather natural power, which may both hurt and benefit man, and which he must attempt to enlist on his side. This enlistment was the task of the Roman priesthood and the Roman government, and so effectually was it carried out that the divine beings lost their vitality in the process. We shall be better able to follow out this curious fate of the Roman deities in later lectures; here I wish to note one other aspect of the Roman idea of divinity, which will help to explain what I have just been saying about the life and force inherent in these numina. In most cursory accounts of the Roman religion it has been the practice to lay particular stress upon an immense number of "gods," as they used to be called, each of which is supposed to have presided over some particular act or suffering of the Roman from the cradle to the grave--from Cunina, the "goddess" of his cradle, to Libitina who looked after his interment. I have as yet said nothing about all these. I will now briefly explain why I have not done so, and why I hesitate to include them, at any rate in the uncompromising form in which they are usually presented, among the genuine religious conceptions of the earliest period. Later on I shall have further opportunity of discussing them; at the end of this lecture I can only sum up the results of recent research into this curious cloud of so-called deities.