central religion of the community, round which the other
worships arrange themselves by degrees, until there comes to be a
system embracing them all, but itself possessing a new character. In
this way a national religion comes into existence. The details of
this process are in every case beyond our observation. It is not
perhaps for centuries after the national religion has come into
operation, that reflection is turned towards it; not till the art of
writing has come to some perfection is it described and formulated
and made statutory; and by that time all accurate memory of its
beginnings has faded away, and its origin is explained instead by a
set of legends. But though its beginnings, like all beginnings, are
obscure, the national religion is there. It has its history; the
great man who brought the tribes together, or who first devised for
them a higher form of worship, is remembered as its founder; the
foundation is ascribed to the inspiration of the chief god himself;
its sacred forms are written down and obtain the force of divine
laws, the will of the deity is a thing clearly known and expressed in
positive terms.

It is not asserted that this description will apply to the origin of
all the national religions; the character and the circumstances of
one nation differ from those of another, and it need not be supposed
that they all reached their state worships in the same way. Some
religions have become national by conquest rather than growth; while
some which may truly be called national never attained to any
national organisation. The process we have described, however, may be
regarded as the typical one for the rise of a national out of tribal
religions, and indicates to us what we may regard as the real and
substantial difference between the stage with which we have been
occupied and that to which we are now to turn. All other differences
between the prehistoric and the historical religions may be traced to
this one. Before the religion of a nation has systematised its
doctrine and its ritual so as to merit the name of positive, before
it has provided itself with a detailed ritual or a fixed creed, or a
regular priesthood, or a set of sacred books, the momentous step has
already been taken, the new form of religious consciousness has
appeared. Men have begun to believe not only in the tribal but in the
national god or gods, and a national religion has come into
existence.

The advance from tribal to nationa