True enough: economic development often leads to upheaval and insurrection, as migration to cities and the rise of the middle class unleash all manner of ambitions and yearnings. Then, looking more closely, they said it stemmed from rising expectations and the perception of inequalities.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the United States many commentators and academics asserted that terrorism stemmed from poverty. Recent explanations for terrorism have themselves been excessively rational. The signal error of the American elite after the end of the Cold War was its trust in rationalism, which, it was assumed, would eventually propel the world's societies toward systems based on individual rights and united by American-style capitalism and technology. Tragedy, as the classicist Edith Hamilton once observed, is the beauty of intolerable truths. Explosions of passion-romantic and destructive, cruel and self-sacrificing, among nations as among individuals-not only are to be expected but are central to the human spirit. They worshiped Dionysus, the god of excess and ecstasy, and they admired tragedy-an art form that shows that human feelings are far too intense and varied to be contained by the narrow strictures of rational selfinterest. The ancient Greeks, it has been said, were too reasonable to ignore the intoxicating power of the unreasonable.

Gogol taras bulba