exist side by side with one
another, just as the countless forms of physical life may be found
existing side by side. The foraminifera exist now, as they existed
millions of years ago; but the fact that they co-exist with higher forms
of physical life does not show that the higher forms of life are but
foraminifera in a more highly evolved form. Similarly, the fact that
fetishism exists side by side with polytheism, or polytheism with
monotheism, does not show that one is but a higher form of another: we
must consider each to be a terminal form, as incapable of producing
another, as it is impossible to conceive that the serpent develops into
the dove.

The common centre and starting-point of fetishism, polytheism, and
monotheism on this view (the 'dispersive' view) of the evolution of
religion lies in the heart of man, in a consciousness, originally vague
in the extreme, of the personality and superiority to man of the being
or object worshipped. In all these three forms of religion there is
worship, and in all three forms the being worshipped is personal.
Further, a special tie is felt to exist between the worshipper and the
personality worshipped: religion is the bond of union between them, and
it is also a bond which unites the worshippers to one another. It is by
its very nature a bond of union, a means of communion between persons,
human and divine. That is the mystic aspect of religion which finds
expression in the rite of sacrifice and in the sacramental meals which
are felt somehow to bind together, or rather to reunite and keep
together, the worshippers and their god. This communion however is not
merely mystic: it has its practical effects inasmuch as it affects the
conduct of the worshipper and enables him to do what without it he would
not have had strength to do.

If fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism radiate from a common centre,
the heart of man, then the heart of man must also be regarded as the
starting-point of magic. If they spring straight from the heart, though
in different directions, dispersively, then magic must also start from
the common centre; and, though its divergence from religion tends to
become total, at first, and indeed it may be for long, the discrepancy
between them is rather felt uneasily than recognized clearly.
Categories, such as those of cause and effect, identity and difference,
which are the common property of civilized thought, and which among us,
Mr. L.T. Hobhouse says,