In what sense, then, can we speak of the evolution of religion?  Evolution implies change; and no one doubts that there have been changes in religion.  No one can imagine that it has from the beginning till now remained identically the same.  What seems conceivable is that throughout there has been, not identity but continuity—­change indeed in continuity but also continuity in change.  The child ’learns to speak the words and think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he does the form of speech’ of the community into which he is born.  In the speech, thought, and feelings—­even in the religious feelings—­of the community, from generation to generation, there is continuity, but not identity.  From generation to generation they are not identical but are continuously changing; and they change because each child who takes them over reproduces them; and, in reproducing them, changes them, not much in most cases, but very considerably in the case of men of genius and the great religious reformers.  The heart is the treasure-house in which not only old things are stored, but from which also new things are brought forth.  The process of evolution implies indeed that the old things, though not everlasting, persist for a time; but it also implies the manifestation of that which, though continuous with the old, is at the same time new.  It is from the heart of man, of some one man, that what is new proceeds:  the community it is which is conservative of the old.  The heart of man, or man himself, exhibits both change in continuity and continuity in change.

The acorn, the sapling, and the oak are different stages of one continuous process.  But it is the same tree throughout the whole process.  So, too, perhaps it may be said, religion is a term which includes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to the stage of monotheism alone, or of polytheism alone, or even to those stages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings.  Each of these stages is a stage in the process of religion but no stage is by itself the whole process.  But this view of the evolution of religion regards religion as though it were an organism, self-subsistent, existing and evolving as independently of man as the oak-tree does; whereas in truth religion has no such independent existence or evolution.  It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does polytheism proceed from fetishism:  it is from the heart of man that they and all other forms of religion emanate and radiate.  To conceive fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism as three successive stages in one process, to represent the evolution of religion by a straight line marked off into three parts, or any other number of parts, is to forget that they do not produce one another but that each emanates from the heart of man.  The fact that they emanate in temporal succession does not prove that one springs from the other.

Nor can we say that values—­religious or aesthetic—­are to be determined on the simple principle that the latest edition is the best.  To say that an editio princeps has value only for the bibliophile is to admit that all values are personal, as are all thoughts and all feelings, all goodness and all love.