ABSTRACT
The collapse of the belief in the capitalist and socialist creeds was translated into terms of individual experience by the World War and the great depression. Modern war appeared to be the denial of all tenets on which the mechanical and rational conception of society is based. Everywhere in Europe the beliefs and tenets of the society of Economic Man have come to be judged only by whether they threaten to provoke the demons or promise to avert and to banish them. Since then the masses are consciously or subconsciously aware that they must choose between abandonment of the traditional society or abandonment of the attempt to banish the demons. The "free" society is the one which is threatened by the demons, it seems more than plausible to blame freedom and to expect delivery from despair through the abandonment of freedom.
