Along with this difference of conception there necessarily goes a corresponding difference in the parts ascribed respectively to determinism and natural law, and to the arbitrary will of the deity or deities. That is to say, the conflict between religion and science, or what will one day become such, exists implicitly in the earliest conceptions of the world. In the beginning, to be sure, there being no such thing as science properly so called, no conflict is apparent; one explains whatever one chooses as the product of an arbitrary will, then little by little the regularity, the determinism, the orderliness of certain phenomena are remarked. Divinities cease to be absolute princes, and become more or less constitutional sovereigns. Therein lies the law of religious evolution, which is much more significant than the law promulgated by Comte; humanity tends progressively to restrict the number of the phenomena with the natural course of which the gods are supposed to interfere; the sphere of natural law tends progressively to become more and more nearly all-comprehensive. The Catholic nowadays no longer believes that a goddess brings his crops to maturity or that a particular god launches a thunder-bolt, though he is still profoundly inclined to imagine that God blesses his fields or punishes him by destroying his house by a flash of lightning; arbitrary power tends to be concentrated in a single being placed on a height above nature. At a still further stage in the course of evolution, the will of this being is conceived as expressed in the laws of nature themselves without allowing for the existence of miraculous exceptions; Providence, the Divinity, becomes _immanent_ in the scientific ordering and determinism of the world. In this respect the Hindus and the Stoics are far in advance of the Catholics. [Sidenote: Unification of creeds incidental to that encroachment.]