Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sometimes imagine, with horror, what would happen if after 500 years of progress, humanity were to realize that almost all cultural practices they painfully, one by one, undid, were all sensible to begin with for reasons that humanity didn't previously understand.
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God”
http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.h...