in most cases, but very considerably in the case of men of genius and
the great religious reformers. The heart is the treasure-house in which
not only old things are stored, but from which also new things are
brought forth. The process of evolution implies indeed that the old
things, though not everlasting, persist for a time; but it also implies
the manifestation of that which, though continuous with the old, is at
the same time new. It is from the heart of man, of some one man, that
what is new proceeds: the community it is which is conservative of the
old. The heart of man, or man himself, exhibits both change in
continuity and continuity in change.

The acorn, the sapling, and the oak are different stages of one
continuous process. But it is the same tree throughout the whole
process. So, too, perhaps it may be said, religion is a term which
includes or is applicable to all stages in the one process, and not to
the stage of monotheism alone, or of polytheism alone, or even to those
stages alone in which there is a reference to personal beings. Each of
these stages is a stage in the process of religion but no stage is by
itself the whole process. But this view of the evolution of religion
regards religion as though it were an organism, self-subsistent,
existing and evolving as independently of man as the oak-tree does;
whereas in truth religion has no such independent existence or
evolution. It is not from polytheism that monotheism proceeds; nor does
polytheism proceed from fetishism: it is from the heart of man that they
and all other forms of religion emanate and radiate. To conceive
fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism as three successive stages in one
process, to represent the evolution of religion by a straight line
marked off into three parts, or any other number of parts, is to forget
that they do not produce one another but that each emanates from the
heart of man. The fact that they emanate in temporal succession does not