hese needs, he seeks for new religious
associations and perhaps appears to preach a doctrine contrary to
patriotism, as it is subversive of the established religion of his
country, and to be wilfully destroying what his countrymen revere,
and wilfully breaking through old ties and obligations. Thus the
individualist stage of religion succeeds the national. But the
individualist stage is also, in part at least, the universal stage.
What the thinking mind and the pious heart seeks and cannot find in
the national worship, is a religion free as the seeker himself has
become free, from all that is unreasonable and artificial, a religion
therefore in which every thinking mind and every pious heart can have
a share. What is gained by individuals in this direction is capable,
therefore, if circumstances favour, of proving an acquisition not
only for the individual reformer or his nation, but for all men. But
as the rise of national religion does not bring to an end the ruder
worships of the tribes, which still go on beside it, so neither does
the rise of individualism, even in its purest form, bring to an end
the national worship. In the long run this may follow, but it does
not take place at once. All three forms of religion go on together;
the religion of magic, that of stately public sacrifices and
ceremonials, and that of intellectual effort and pious meditation and
prayer. Each no doubt influences to some extent the others, and is
influenced by them in turn.

The movement thus indicated from tribal to national, and from
national to individual and to universal religion, is the central
development of religion, and all the minor developments which might
be traced, as that of sacrifice from rude to spiritual forms, of the
functions of the sacred class, of the morality dictated by religion
at its various stages, or of the literature connected with piety, may
be explained by reference to this one. This movement has taken place
in every nation; we have seen something of it in each of our
chapters. In some nations it has been early arrested, so that no
important contribution has there been brought to the general religion
of mankind, in others it has run its full course, and like a great
river has arrived at the ocean at last, to mingle its waters with
those of other mighty streams.

The story of the growth of the world's religion has therefore to be
told in a number of parallel narratives, each dealing with the
experience of a