Men are strong only so long as they represent a strong idea. They become powerless when they oppose it.

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another

The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief

The demons of animism were usually hostile to man, but it seems as though man had more confidence in himself in those days than later on.

Men are strong so long as they represent a strong idea they become powerless when they oppose it.

In his fight against the powers of the surrounding world his first weapon was magic, the first forerunner of our modern technology. We suppose that this confidence in magic is derived from the over-estimation of the individual’s own intellectual operations, from the belief in the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, which, incidentally, we come across again in our obsessional neurotics.