therefore made strongly for loyalty to
the tribe, and for the observance of its customs; it caused a man to
forget his own interest where that of the tribe was concerned, and
unhesitatingly to sacrifice himself for the public cause. But, on the
other hand, primitive religion was an intensely conservative force;
it subjected the whole life to the customs of the tribe, and
discouraged spontaneity and independence in moral action. The duties
it prescribed were of a conventional order; a man had no duties to
those beyond his tribe, and to his fellow-tribesmen religion bade him
rather walk by rule than consult his own feelings. Of the morality
which consists in discipline and subordination to the community,
early religion was an efficient school; to the higher morality, the
law of which is found written in the heart, and which aims at
rendering higher services than those of custom, it did not attain.
The worship of the higher nature-powers, the heavenly powers of light
and kindness, tending as it did to transcend the limits of place and
of nationality, was destined powerfully to foster a more generous
morality than that of the tribal worship, and this tendency was no
doubt dimly felt by early man long before it was possible for him to
follow it.

CHAPTER VI
NATIONAL RELIGION

We now leave behind us the beliefs and practices of savage and
barbarous tribes, and turn to those of mighty empires. The gulf which
lies between these two parts of our subject is obviously a wide one;
and in many instances there is no bridge by which the student can
pass from one to the other. Often it is a matter of inference rather
than of direct proof that the great systems are built out of the
materials accumulated, as we have seen, in the prehistoric period.
But the inference is sufficiently strong to rest upon; in some cases
we are able to see quite clearly how the religion of the empire arose
by an uninterrupted growth out of that of the tribe; and in the cases
where this cannot be so fully made out, we yet judge that the result
came about in a similar way. We pause therefore at this point to ask
what is the nature of the transition at which we have arrived, or, in
other words, what constitutes the difference between the primitive
and the later religions? The difference is probably not one of
magnitude only; it consists not merely in the fact that the religion
of the empire is that of a much larger number of people than that of
the t