What was civilization ever, really, but the attempt by man to talk himself into being good? Only good, mind you. The rest had to be shoved somewhere out of sight, under the rug. Which History indeed did, at times politely, at times police-ly, and yet something was always sticking out, breaking loose, overthrowing.
“It is important that our creation … mirror the puzzles with which we are surrounded, so that our soul may endeavor — not to solve them — but to decipher them… for the puzzles are an image of the ungraspable. An imperfect, that is, a human image. But if we can only learn from them to consider the ungraspable as possible, we get nearer to God, because we no longer demand to understand him.”
Arnold Schoenberg