VLVL (6) Pynchon's parables

[Terrance]

This influence of the religious component on human history must still be
studied, and from this standpoint one might say that the history of the
last 200 years should be rewritten. Phenomena such as the French
Revolution and the Marxist Revolution may be grasped as something
more profound than the products of political-philosophical ideologies,
as being partially determined by the decay of the religious spirit--a
process which unleashes in the human psychology previously contained
and restrained forces. 


Sabino Acquaviva, _ The Decline of the Sacred in Industrial Society_