In hecastotheism the believer finds mysterious properties and potencies everywhere. To his mind every object is endued with occult power, moved by a vague volition, actuated by shadowy motive ranging capriciously from malevolence to benevolence; in his lax estimation some objects are more potent or more mysterious than others, the strong, the sharp, the hard, and the swift-moving rising superior to the feeble, the dull, the soft, and the slow. Commonly he singles out some special object as his personal, family, or tribal mystery-symbol or fetich, the object usually representing that which is most feared or worst hated among his surroundings. Vaguely realizing from the memory of accidents or unforeseen events that he is dependent on his surroundings, he invests every feature of his environment with a capricious humor reflecting his own disposition, and gives to each and all a subtlety and inscrutability corresponding to his exalted estimation of his own craft in the chase and war; and, conceiving himself to live and move only at the mercy of his multitudinous associates, he becomes a fatalist—kismet is his watchword, and he meets defeat and death with resignation, just as he goes to victory with complacence; for so it was ordained. Zootheism is the offspring of hecastotheism. As the primitive believer assigns special potency or mystery to the strong and the swift, he gradually comes to give exceptional rank to self-moving animals; as his experience of the strength, alertness, swiftness, and courage of his animate enemy or prey increases, these animals are invested with successively higher and higher attributes, each reflecting the mental operations of the mystical huntsman, and in time the animals with which the primitive believers are most intimately associated come to be regarded as tutelary daimons of supernatural power and intelligence. At first the animals, like the undifferentiated things of hecastotheism, are regarded in fear or awe by reason of their strength and ferocity, and this regard grows into an incipient worship in the form of sacrifice or other ceremonial; meanwhile, inanimate things, and in due season rare and unimportant animals, are neglected, and a half dozen, a dozen, or a score of the well-known animals are exalted into a hierarchy of petty gods, headed by the strongest like the bear, the swiftest like the deer, the most majestic like the eagle, the most cunning like the fox or coyote, or the most deadly like the rattlesnake. Commonly the arts and the skill of the mystical huntsman improve from youth to adolescence and from generation to generation, so that the later animals appear to be easier snared or slain than the earlier; moreover, the accounts of conflicts between men and animals grow by repetition and are gilded by imagination as memory grows dim; and for these and other reasons the notion grows up that the ancient animals were stronger, swifter, slier, statelier,