validity. In fine, the belief in magic seems to be based not on any
principle of thought, but upon the assumption that, if something
happens, somebody must have done it, and therefore must have had the
power to do it.

Wundt, whilst differing from Frazer in his description of magic, is at
one with him in believing that before religion existed there was an age
of magic. But Wundt's view that marvels are magic when supposed to have
been done by man, but miracles when supposed to have been done by a god
or his priests, suggests the possibility that, as the belief in magic is
found usually, if not always, to exist side by side with the belief in
miracles, the two beliefs may from the beginning have co-existed, that
the age of magic is not prior in the course of evolution to the age of
religion. This possibility, it will be admitted, derives some colour at
least from the way in which the theory of evolution is employed to
account for the origin of species: different though reptiles are from
birds, the serpent from the dove, both are descended from a common
ancestor, the archaeopteryx. If this instance be taken as typical of the
process of evolution in general, then the course of evolution is not, so
to speak, linear or rectilinear, but--to use M. Bergson's
word--'dispersive'. To suppose that religion is descended from magic
would then be as erroneous as to suppose that birds are descended from
reptiles or man from the monkey. The true view will be that the course
of evolution is not linear, is not a line produced for ever in the same
direction, not a succession of stages, but is 'dispersive', that from a
common starting point many lines of evolution radiate in different
directions. The course of evolution is not unilinear but multilinear; it
runs on many lines which diverge, but all the diverging lines start from
the same point.