If we do not succeed in solving these problems, we shall tremble on the verge of perils as immense and deadly as the war itself: economic disaster, social cataclysm, famine, pestilence, the general dissolution of religion, morality, and civilization, with a fleeting reversion to barbarism as the end of it all. Only then, only after whole countries and continents have been largely depopulated through tasting the extremes of suffering, will the scanty remnant of people find their way back to a new and nobler and healthier way of life than that which prevailed before. It will surely come, even at this fearful price, because it must come. It was hinted in two earlier books that if our civilization does not better itself, it will have to sink and make way for another one. And we have hinted also that humanity is walking on the edge of a precipice. But this does not mean that our failure will necessarily result in a total lapse into barbarism. Rather will it clear the way through wide depopulation and sharp anguish for the coming of a nobler and more advanced society than the present one. The sins and sufferings of our generation cannot destroy the faith of the philosopher in humanity's nature. He knows that its better nature will triumph in the end, even though the price of that triumph may be an utter destruction of all its civilization and a fresh start after still worse suffering. For it faces the necessity of giving up the materialistic outlook which brought it into such catastrophe. There is no escape from this necessity.
-- Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 4 : World Crisis > # 374
