Another way of excluding spiritual caprice, which we might suppose to have been discovered by philosophers, but which appears to be older than what we usually call “Philosophy,” is to subordinate the gods to Fate. The idea has been attributed to the astronomers or astrologers of Babylon that Fate must be above the gods as the constant heaven of the fixed stars is above the planets:[338] an analogy characteristic of magical thought. But the roots of the idea of Fate are much older and wider spread in the slow, steady growth of the belief in uniformity, which is the common ground of Magic and Science; and (as I have said) before laws of nature had been discovered, Fate was an all-comprehensive Magic. Fate reduces the gods to the status of wheels in a machine; omens and oracles, instead of being sent or inspired by the gods, are also part of the machinery, and may point to their destruction; prayers and sacrifices are other parts of the machinery and, at most, may be a means of assuaging the anxiety of one’s own heart. A stern way of envisaging the world: but it gives not only security against the gods, but also resignation and tranquillity. Philosophical Christianity regards the actions of God as always manifested, in the physical order, through “second causes,” or, in other words, in “the laws of nature”; and, in the spiritual order, as always observing the moral laws that are the principles of divine Reason; in either case there can be no variableness nor shadow of turning.