Petitions, then, put up to polytheistic gods, or even to fetishes, may still be prayers. But petitions may be put up, not only to polytheistic gods, or to fetishes, but even to the one god of the monotheist, which never should be put up. 'Of thy goodness, slay mine enemies,' is, in form, prayer: it is a desire, a petition to a god, implying recognition of the superiority of the divine power, implying adoration even. But eventually it comes to be condemned as an impossible prayer: spiritually it is a contradiction in terms. If however we say that it is not, and never was, prayer; and that only by confusion of thought was it ever considered so, we may be told that, as a simple matter of actual fact, it is an actual prayer that was actually put up. That it ought not--from the point of view of a later stage in the development of religion--to have been put up, may be admitted; but that it was a prayer actually put up, cannot be denied. To this the reply seems to be that it is with prayer as it is with argument: a fallacy is a fallacy, just as much before it is detected as afterwards. The fact that it is not detected does not make it a sound argument; still less does it prove either that there are now no principles of correct reasoning or that there were none then; it only shows that there was, on this point, confusion of thought. So too we may admit--we have no choice but to admit--that there are spiritual fallacies, as well as fallacies of logic. Of such are the petitions which are in form prayers, just as logical fallacies are, in form, arguments. They may be addressed to the being worshipped, as fallacies are addressed to the reason; and eventually their fallacious nature may become evident even to the reason of man. But it is only by the evolution of prayer, that is by the disclosure of its true nature, that petitions of the kind in question come to be recognised and condemned as spiritual fallacies. The petitioner who puts up such petitions is indeed unconscious of his error, but he errs, for all that, just as the person who uses a fallacious argument may be himself the victim of his fallacy: but he errs none the less because he is deceived himself. There are normative principles of prayer as well as the normative principles of thought; and both operate 'long before they come to the surface of human thought and are articulately expounded.' It is in thinking that the normative principles of thought emerge. But it is by no means the case that they come to the surface of every man's thought. So too it is in prayer that the normative principles of prayer emerge; yet men require teaching how to pray. Some petitions are permissible, some not.