“It was possible for Paine, in the 18th century, to believe that culture was served merely by the absence of a church, a state, a social order such as those under which Europe labored. That was the error of his school, for the absence of these harmful or obsolete institutions left a vacancy in society, and that vacancy was filled by work, or more accurately speaking, by busy work, which fatigued the body and diverted the mind from the things which should have enriched it. Republican politics aided this externalism. People sought to live by politics alone; the National State became their religion. The flag…supplanted the cross, and the Fathers of the Constitution the Fathers of the Church.”
Lewis Mumford, Interpretations and Forecasts, 14-15