is to act as he should
act.

But though many thousands of years elapsed before he recognised these
laws, they were, all the time, the laws on which he had to think,
speak and act, and did actually think, speak and act, so far as he did
so correctly. When, then, we speak of the evolution of thought, speech
and action, we cannot mean that the laws of thought, for instance,
were in the beginning different from what they are now, and only
gradually came to be what they are at present. That would be just the
same as saying that the law of gravitation did not operate in the way
described by Newton until Newton formulated the law. The fact is that
science has its evolution, just as thought, speech and action have.
Man gradually and with much effort discovers laws of science, as he
discovers the laws of thought, speech and action. In neither case does
he make the laws; all that he does in either case is to come to
recognise that they are there. But the recognition is a process, a
slow process, attended by many mistakes and set-backs. And this slow
process of the gradual recognition or discovery of fundamental laws,
or first principles, is the process in which the evolution of science,
as well as the evolution of thought, speech and action, consists. It
is the process by which the laws that are at the bottom of man's
thought, speech and action, and are fundamental to them, tend to rise
to the surface of consciousness.

It is in this same process that the evolution of religion consists. It
is the slow process, the gradual recognition, of the fundamental idea
of religion--the idea of God--which tends to rise to the surface of
the religious consciousness. Just as laws of thought, speech and
action are implied by the very conception of right thought or speech
or action, so the idea of God is implied by the mere conception of
religion. It is implied always; it is implicit from the very
beginning. It is disclosed gradually and imperfectly. The process of
disclosure, which is the evolution of the idea, may, in many
instances, be arrested at a stage of very early imperfection, by
causes which make further development in that direction impossible;
and then, if further progress is to be made, a fresh movement, in a
fresh direction must be made. Just as men do not always think
correctly, or act rightly, though they tend, in different degrees, to
do so; so too, in religion, neither do they always move in the right
direction, even if the