Chapter XIV, Excerpt 1 of 2
The Virgin and the Dynamo

The Declaration of Independence blew Europe off its moral base. At one move, the United States has caused the present explosion and disintegration of Europe. The early settlers brought to this country their morals, science, customs, and law; but they left behind most of the apparatus of enforcement. They did not bring either the closed economy or sacramental religion. The wilderness provided sufficient recourse. Whatever survived on its own validated itself. Liberty emerged and triumphed.

In contrast to the mass determinism of Greek democracy or the dead-end of Asiatic despotism, in the Roman political system free will was given legitimate play as the operative principle. While the United States was in the making, as a few happily neglected colonies, something queer happened to European thought; by way of science, it reverted to determinism in the social and political sphere. When the mechanistic theory of the universe gained credence, the theory of “natural” man was formulated.

The mechanistic philosophy is a very late importation to America; and it is wholly imported. It did not derive from our machinery. Machines to an American are still an expression of free will. What Europeans wanted was something that would run itself and humanity with it, requiring nothing of men except passive submission. The subjective is inconceivable without the objective. Europeans rationalized themselves back below savagery. Before the end of the 18th century, Europe was asking for a dictator.