The trouble is that our period has so strangely intertwined the good with the bad that without the imperialists’ ‘expansion for expansion’s sake,’ the world might never have become one; without the bourgeoisie’s political device of ‘power for power’s sake,’ the extent of human strength might never have been discovered; without the fictitious world of totalitarian movements, in which with unparalleled clarity the essential uncertainties of our time have been spelled out, we might have been driven to our doom without ever becoming aware of what has been happening.
