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Book:  The Modern Temper by Joseph Wood Krutch

A very excellent book about metaphysics and Western civilization.  I cannot summarize better than the author himself:

The universe revealed by science, especially the sciences of biology and psychology, is one in which the human spirit cannot find a comfortable home.  That spirit breathes freely only in a universe where what philosophers call Value Judgments are of supreme importance.  It needs to believe, for instance, that right and wrong are real, that Love is more than a biological function, that the human mind is capable of reason rather than merely rationalization, and that it has the power to will and to choose instead of being compelled merely to react in the fashion predetermined by its conditioning.  Since science has proved that none of these beliefs is more than a delusion, mankind will be compelled either to surrender what we call its humanity by adjusting to the real world or to live some kind of tragic existence in a universe alien to the deepest needs of its nature.