ABSTRACT
This chapter looks upon the epoch as a time of troubles, an age of anxiety. Neither capitalism nor Communism is the cause of the contemporary upsurge of anxiety. Each system is charged with having dehumanized the worker, fettered the lower classes and destroyed personal and political liberty. The specifications for the new society cannot but strain to the utmost the emotional and moral resources of the individual and the community. In retrospect, these demands seem to have been too severe and exhausting. Civilization has not met them, which is why it is consumed by anxiety and fear. The conception of the free society—a society committed to the protection of the liberties of conscience, expression and political opposition—is the crowning glory of western history. A static and decentralized society, based on agriculture and handicraft, was a society dependent on personal ties and governed by a personal ethic.
