, in the case of literature, or art, for instance, that the two
orders are identical. There it is obvious and universally admitted
that one period may reach a higher level than another which in point of
time is later. The classical period is followed by a post-classical
period; culmination is followed by decline. {8} Now, this difference
in point of the literary or artistic value of two periods is as real
and as fundamental as the time order or chronological relation of the
two periods. It would be patently ridiculous for any ardent maintainer
of the importance of distinguishing between good literature and bad,
good art and bad art, to say that the one period, being good, must have
been chronologically prior to the other, because, from the point of
art, it was better than that other. Every one can see that. The
chronological order, the historic order, is one thing; the order of
literary value or artistic importance is another. But if this is
granted, and every one will grant it, then it is also, and thereby,
granted that the historic order of events is not the same thing as the
order of their value, and is no guide to it. Thus far I have
illustrated these remarks by reference to literary and artistic values.
But I need hardly say that I have been thinking really all the time of
religious values. If the student of literature or of art surveys the
history of art and literature with the purpose of judging the value of
the works produced, the student of religion may and must survey the
history of religion with the same purpose. If the one student is
entitled, as he {9} justly is entitled, to say that the difference
between the literary or artistic value of two periods is as real and as
fundamental as is their difference in the order of time, then the
student of religion is claiming no exceptional or suspicious privilege
for himself. He is claiming no privilege at all; he is but exercising
the common rights of all students like himself, when he points out that
differences in religious values are just as real and just as
fundamental as the historic or chronological order itself.

The assignment of values, then,--be it the assignment of the value of
works of art, literature, or religion,--is a proceeding which is not
only possible (as will be somewhat contemptuously admitted by those who
believe that evolution is progress, and that there is no order of value
distinct from the order of history and chronological succes