These books remind men of the glory and grandeur of man and the glories and grandeurs that give meaning to mankind. There are in existence a few books that can cure the sickness of cynicism. There remains, however, an escape authored by Hope.
What hope can be had for the human condition when human behavior is the Alpha and the Omega and also thought - even scientifically - as driven by nothing more than self-interest and self-indulgence? When imperfection is all there is, what more than gloom, mistrust, disparagement, or even despair can be expected? This is the plague of youth, the emasculation of men, the ruin of women, the death of Christian culture, and the prison of cynicism, where, in the words of Oscar Wilde, people know the price of everything but the value of nothing. When cynical men lose faith in man, they cannot retain faith in anything higher than mankind, which leaves a pretty poor playing field. This attitude degenerates into a psychosis that questions man’s sincerity of motive or his rectitude of conduct.
Man is naturally imperfect, and thus it is natural that purely anthropological philosophies are suspicious - even contemptuous - of any kind of idealism. In a godless world where men tend to hedge their bets on man before anything else, it is not surprising that many experience existential letdowns.