Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/807

 THE ROLE OF MAGIC 793

last a consistent theory for the main line of religious evolution ; and we reach the strange conclusion that the sacraments, as insti- tutions which still definitely embody the earliest impulses toward religion, are older than God himself — older, at least in that comparatively modern thing in this old universe, that reflex of actuality which we call the human consciousness.