Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.
ATTRIBUTION:
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Austrian psychiatrist. repr. in Complete Works, Standard Edition, vol. 21, eds. James Strachey and Anna Freud (1961). Civilization and its Discontents, ch. 6 (1931).
