The cries for brotherhood and love of fellow-man are but a slogan. Not fraternity but a false uniformity is the goal toward which its glittering images drive us.… If multiformity is the undeniable mark of fresh and vigorous life, our age seeks to realize its curse in its quest for uniformity. Its attempts to blend all shades into the blank darkness of the grave are becoming ever more obvious. Ever more shrilly it cries out that in our modern society, everything, however distinctive in nature, must be shaped by one model, cut to a single pattern, or poured into one fixed mold.

It is like the ancient outlaw [Procrustes] who, myth tells us, compelled every traveler he could catch to lie on an iron bed, cutting off their legs by as many inches as they were too long and stretching those who were too short until each completely and precisely fit its dimensions. Blind to the rich profusion of the different shades of life, it crushes everything fresh and natural by its thirst for the conventional. Unable to appreciate the distinctive features of the face of humanity, it grinds away with a coarse hand all the divinely engraved markings on the copper plate of life. By filing away all that is uneven and buffing up the natural ore it aims at the mirrorlike smoothness in which no semblance of uniqueness can ever be found again. Indeed, it hacks away at the green wood of the tree of life until neither sprig or twig can ever sprout from the skeletal trunk again.

Abraham Kuyper