Intellectual doubt joined political despair: Just as Enlightenment faith in universal reason was collapsing, this very faith was taking a bad rap for social catastrophe. The mood and the argument sounded like this: Look at the twentieth century! Need anything more be said than those dreadful words, twentieth century? Civilization, ever more rational in its means, has become ever more conquistadorial in its conduct, more deadly in its consequences. A whole civilization can chant along with Ahab: "All my means are sane but my end is mad."
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