Both are products of the materialistic philosophy of the 19th century that repudiated God and spiritual religion, proclaiming that only the tangible and material elements of everyday life here on earth had any real influence upon human conduct and the course of history.

Humans in that philosophy are merely bundles of nerves and muscle that respond positively to sensual pleasure and negatively to pain. Intellectuals, therefore, in theory, can structure political societies that will create universal happiness and harmony, effecting paradise on earth. It was this promise that gave us the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany.

Freud looked clinically at individual cases, concluding that the discontents of modern civilization arise from the conflict between man’s sensual (primarily sexual) urges and the restrictions imposed by Judeo-Christian morality. He came down in favor of following the sensual urges in order to have a happy life.

Ortega’s view encompassed the whole of European society in the post-World War I era. Mr. Daniels writes:

Both Freud and Ortega were atheists and regarded spiritual religion as ignorance to be banished by what in the United States John Dewey called progressive education.

What Freud and Ortega would not see was that the socialistic materialism spawned by the French Revolution was the true source of civilization’s discontents and the banality and crassness of mass man.

By initiating the destruction of Christianity in Europe, the French Revolutionary version of the Age of Enlightenment effectively decapitated civilization, leaving one-dimensional humans with bodies but little wisdom.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.