t and fundamentally
antagonistic, though originally the two categories were confused.

The theory that spell preceded prayer and became prayer, or that magic
developed into religion, finds as little support in the facts afforded
by the science of religion, as the converse theory of a primitive
revelation and a paradisaical state in which religion alone was known.
For what is found in one stage of evolution the capacity must have
existed in earlier stages; and if both prayer and spell, both magic
and religion, are found, the capacity for both must have pre-existed.
And instead of seeking to deny either, in the interests of a
pre-conceived theory, we must recognise both potentialities, in the
interest of truth.

Just as man spoke, for countless thousands of years, before he had
any idea of the principles on which he spoke, of the laws of speech or
of the grammar of his language; just as he reasoned, long before he
made the reasoning process matter of reflection, and reduced it to the
laws of logic; so from the beginning he was religious though he had no
more idea that there were principles of religion, than that there were
principles of grammar or laws of correct thought. 'First principles of
every kind have their influence, and indeed operate largely and
powerfully, long before they come to the surface of human thought and
are articulately expounded' (Ferrier: _Institute of Metaphysics_, p.
13).

But this is not to say that primitive man argued, or thought, with
never an error, or spoke with never a mistake, until by some
catastrophe he was expelled from some paradise of grammarians and
logicians. Though correct reasoning was logical before the time of
Aristotle, and correct speech grammatical before the time of Dionysius
Thrax; there was before, as there has been since, plenty both of bad
logic and bad grammar. But that is very different from saying that, in
the beginning, all reasoning was unsound, or all speech ungrammatical.
To say so, would be as unmeaning and as absurd as to say that
primitive man's every action was immoral, and his habitual state one
of pure, unmitigated wickedness. If the assumption of a primitive
paradise is unworkable, neither will the assumption of a primitive
inferno act, whether it is for the evolution of the grammar of
language or morality, or of logic or religion, that we wish to
account. It is to ask too much, to ask us to believe that in the
beginning there was only wrong-doing and n