The Loss of Faith and Poetry in the West

Not only was faith lost in the West, but also poetry, which in the absence of living convictions became transformed into a barren amusement; and the more exclusively poetry sought imagined pleasure alone, the more tedious it became.

Only one serious thing was left to man, and that was industry. For man, the reality of existence survived only in his physical person. Industry rules the world without faith or poetry. In our time, it unites and divides people. It determines one’s fatherland; it delineates classes; it lies at the base of state structures; it moves nations; it declares war, makes peace, changes mores, gives direction to science, and determines the character of culture. Men bow down before it and erect temples to it. It is the real deity in which people sincerely believe and to which they submit. ~ Ivan Kireyevsky