The gravest spiritual danger to a civilization is not always its descent into barbarism. It may also be its success. A culture may become so adept at relieving discomfort, organizing life, extending power, and illuminating the mechanisms of the world that it forgets the one darkness it cannot master by technique: the wound of sin and the estrangement of the creature from God. At that point, the counterfeit kingdom is not imposed from without. It arises from within the very habits by which man seeks to secure himself against the need for grace.