y move at all. They may even deteriorate, at
times, in religion, as, at times, they deteriorate in morality. But it
is not necessary to infer from this undoubted fact that there are no
principles of either morality or religion. We are not led to deny the
existence of the laws of logic or of grammar, because they are
frequently disregarded by ourselves and others.

The principles, or rather some particular principle, of morality may
be absolutely misconceived by a community, at some stage of its
history, in such a way that actions of a certain kind are not
condemned by it. The inconsistency of judgment and feeling, thus
displayed, is not the less inconsistent because it is almost, if not
entirely, unconscious. In the same way a community may fail to
recognise a principle of religion, or may misinterpret the idea of
God; still the fact that they misinterpret it is proof that they have
it--if they had it not, they could not interpret it in different ways.
And the different interpretations are the different ways in which its
evolution is carried forward. Its evolution is not in one continuous
line, but is radiative from one common centre, and is dispersive. That
is the reason why the originators of religious movements, and the
founders of religions, consider themselves to be restoring an old
state of things, rather than initiating a new one; to be returning to
the old religion, rather than starting a new religion. But in point of
fact they are not reverting to a bygone stage in the history of
religion; they are starting afresh from the fundamental principles of
religion. From the central idea of religion, the idea of God, they
move in a direction different from any hitherto followed. Monotheism
may in order of time follow upon polytheism, but it is not polytheism
under another name, any more than prayer is spell under another name.
It is something very different: it is the negation of polytheism, not
another form of it. It strikes at the roots of polytheism; and it does
so because it goes back not to polytheism but to that from which
polytheism springs, the idea of God; and starts from it in a direction
which leads to a very different manifestation of the idea of God. And
if monotheism displaces polytheism, it does so because it is found by
experience to be the more faithful interpretation of that idea of God
which even the polytheist has in his soul. In the same way, and for
the same reasons, polytheism is not fetishism un