may be put up and sacrifices be offered by a man for the sake of what he
is going to get by doing so; and that that is what Sir James Frazer
means when he sees in religion the belief that beings superior to man
may be induced by prayer so to order things that man may get his heart's
desire. Then, indeed, we get a continuity of evolution, a continuity
between magic and religion, which Frazer perhaps did not intend wholly
to deny: that is to say the continuous thread running through both magic
and religion and uniting them is desire. Desire is continuous, though
the means of gratifying it change. In one stage of evolution magic is
the means; in another, religion. But throughout we find the process of
evolution to be continuous--change in continuity and continuity in
change.

Now it is indeed undeniable that prayer and sacrifice may be made by a
man for the sake of what he is going to get, and may from the beginning
have been made, partly at least, from that motive. But if evolution in
one of its aspects is change, then one of the changes brought about by
evolution in religion is precisely that prayer and sacrifice come to be
regarded as no longer a means whereby a man can get his desires
accomplished--his will done--but as the indispensable condition for
doing God's will. Prayer then becomes communion with God, and the
sacrifice of self the living exhibition of love--the first principle of
religion, the principle which manifests itself now in prayer and now in
sacrifice.

From this point of view, then, Sir James Frazer's account of religion
will be considered unacceptable: it makes religion and magic alike but
means whereby man has--vainly--sought to satisfy desire. And the
implication is that the day of both alike is over. But if Frazer's
account of religion is unacceptable, his account of magic also is open