or Japan.

The reason why individualistic religion takes such an important part
in the higher evolution of man is, in a word, because the religious
sanctions are so much more powerful than all others, either legal or
social. For the legal sanctions are chiefly negative; they are also
partial and uncertain, and easily evaded by the selfish individual.
The social sanctions, too, are often far from just or impartial or
wise. Furthermore, the rise of individualism in the social order
secures privacy for the individual, and so far forth removes him from
the restraints and stimuli of the social sanctions. It is the
religious sanctions alone that follow the man in every waking moment.
Not one of all his acts escapes the eye of the religious judgment. He
is his own judge, and he cannot escape bearing witness against
himself.

Now, it is manifest that where superior beings and man's relation to
these and the corresponding religious sanctions are defectively
conceived, as, for instance, quite apart either from the individual or
the communal life, they are valueless to the higher evolution of man
and have little interest for the student of social evolution. In
proportion, however, as man advances in intellectual grasp of
religious truths and in susceptibility to the moral ideas and
religious sanctions they provide, conceiving of morality and religion
as inseparable parts of the same system, the more powerfully does
religion enter into and promote man's higher evolution. An
individualistic social order demands the religious sanctions more
imperatively than a communal social order; for, in proportion as it is
individualistic, the social order is weak in compelling, through the
legal and social sanctions alone, the communal or altruistic activity
of the individual. Altruistic spirit and action, however, are
essential to the maintenance even of that individualistic order. The
more highly society develops, therefore, the more religious must each
member of the society become.

The same truth may be stated from another standpoint. The higher man
develops, the more impatient he becomes with illogical reasonings and
defective conceptions; he thus becomes increasingly skeptical in
regard to current traditional religions with their crude, primitive
ideas; he is accordingly increasingly freed from the restraints they
impose. But unless he finds some new religious sanctions for the
communal life, for social conduct, and for the individual