(...) the trend that was given to Western development by the Renaissance and the Reformation and the discovery of America which led to an exaggerated conception of the rights of the individual and an isufficient appeciation of his duties. The process has been accelerated by the abuse of mechanical progress from printing to flying, by the corruption of the ideal of popular education, by the institution of theory for religious practice, by the continually growing power of money, and by the encouragement of an illusory freedom of thought at the cost of real freedom of action. The liberty that seemed within grasp at the beginning of the fifteenth century is now further away than ever, and it is likely to receed still further as long as man elects to be the slave of self rather than the servant of God...

Compton Mackenzie