Abstract

The next major move is to ascribe to the mind of our first statement the blessed rage for order of our second. We may then bring the exclamation and the warning into immediate play in the following manner: We assume that--at least so far as western civilization is concerned--all periods of human culture arise as responses to a single perennial human need, namely, the mind's desire for order. But we remember that this desire is problematical. It is always threatened from two sides by dangers between which the human enterprise steers a perilous course, a course which zigzags from one brink to another, driving men continually from one to another temporary solution, one to another cultural environment. The dangers are simple, constant and recurrent, but the historical thrust is irreversible.