"The family was itself a religious unit"

"BUT a culture is not merely a community of work and a community of place; it is above all a community of thought, and is seen and known best in its higher spiritual activities, to which alone the name of Culture was first applied. It is impossible to understand or explain society by its material factors alone without considering the religious, intellectual and artistic influences which determine the form of its inner cultural life.

"Even if we consider society in its simplest form—the family—we still find these factors intervening in a decisive way. Not only do the religious and moral beliefs of a society always affect the structure and life of the family, but as in China and in classical antiquity, the family was itself a religious unit and its whole life was consecrated by religious rites and based on religious sanctions.”

~Christopher Dawson: Sociology as a Science. (1934)

"Social planning"

"IF we accept the principle of social planning from the bottom upwards without regard for spiritual values we are left with a machine-made culture which differs from one country to another only in so far as the process of mechanization is more or less perfected. To most people this is rather an appalling prospect, for the ordinary man does not regard the rationalization of life as the only good. On the contrary, men are often more attracted by the variety of life than by its rationality. Even if it were possible to solve all the material problems of life: poverty, unemployment and war and to construct a uniform scientifically-organized world order, neither the strongest nor the highest elements in human nature would find satisfaction in it."

~Christopher Dawson: The Judgment of the Nations. (1942)