 He acknowledged that their common ground resulted in a cross-over of magical and religious elements in various instances; for instance he claimed that the sacred marriage was a fertility ritual which combined elements from both world-views.Some scholars retained the evolutionary framework used by Frazer but changed the order of its stages; the German ethnologist Wilhelm Schmidt argued that "religion"—by which he meant monotheism—was the first stage of human belief, which later degenerated into both magic and polytheism.Others rejected the evolutionary framework entirely.