It has been necessary to dwell upon this doctrine because it has an important bearing upon two further questions, which the philosophy of evolution has brought into new prominence, the relation of Christianity to previous philosophy and other religions. It was the fashion, not long ago, to give an undue value to the part played by environment or surrounding circumstances in the creation of characters and institutions and creeds, to the exclusion of all elements of native originality. And the attempt was made accordingly, in various ways, to represent Christianity as the natural product of the different religions and philosophies which were current in the world at the time of its appearing. But the further study of evolution has qualified this whole mode of thought by the way in which, as we have seen above, it has led us to look at things as organisms rather than machines. A machine has no internal principle of unity. Its unity is impressed upon it from without. And it may be granted therefore, for the sake of argument, that we might conceive a machine or number of machines as formed like the patterns in a caleidoscope by a happy coincidence of atoms; and man, if he were only a machine, as strictly the creature of circumstance. But an organism is a different thing. Dependent as it is upon its environment in an hundred various ways, it is yet more dependent upon its own selective and assimilative capacity, in other words upon its own individuality, its self. And so the notions of individuality, originality, personal identity have been restored to their place in the world of thought. The old error lingers on, and is sometimes crudely re-asserted, especially in its anti-Christian bearing; but it has been discredited by science, and is in fact a thing of the past. And in consequence of this, the attempt can no longer be plausibly made to account for Christianity apart from the personality of Jesus Christ. The mythical theories have had their day. And it is recognised on all hands that mere aspiration can no more create a religion than appetite can create food. A foundation needs a founder.