ABSTRACT
The development of capitalism seems to mark a decisive shift in the spiritual history of the west. However vital a part the purely religious transformation of traditional values played at its outset, the subsequent growth of capitalism as a civilization apparently stands apart from any religious interest. In the face of capitalism, religion appears everywhere to be in retreat, and it is only because every society carries along with it debris from its own past that religion, in some anachronistic form, survives the capitalist upheaval.
