Only three brief periods of history were culturally dominated by a philosophy
of reason: ancient Greece, the Renaissance, the nineteenth century. These three
periods were the source of mankind’s greatest progress in all fields of
intellectual achievement—and the eras of greatest political freedom. The rest
of human history was dominated by mysticism of one kind or another, that is: by
the belief that man’s mind is impotent, that reason is futile or evil or both,
and that man must be guided by some irrational “instinct” or feeling or
intuition or revelation, by some form of blind, unreasoning faith. All the
centuries dominated by mysticism were the eras of political tyranny and
slavery, of rule by brute force—from the primitive barbarism of the jungle—to
the Pharaohs of Egypt—to the emperors of Rome—to the feudalism of the Dark
and Middle Ages—to the absolute monarchies of Europe—to the modern
dictatorships of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and all their lesser carbon
copies.