Bertrand Russell: (1947) WESTERN PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT

... from 600 B.C. to the present day, philosophers have been divided into those who wished to tighten social bonds and those who wished to relax them. ... Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers; ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes co-operation impossible.