Paul Valéry argued that the most threatening crisis to Europe after World War I would be the intellectual crisis.
According the writer, the Earth was left with ashes after World War I due to an increased intellectual development. In Crisis of the Mind (1919), Valéry states that provoking so much destruction would have been impossible without the great virtues of the leaders. He argues that the great virtues of the German people were what allowed them to spread evil in Earth. In that way, Paul Valéry believes that the scientific development and; therefore, the high intellectual growth, was what brought horror and millions of deaths to Europe in the form of tanks, flamethrowers, and poison gas. Furthermore, he argues that the intellectual crisis will be more dangerous than other crisis due to the deceptive nature of intellect and its ability to dissimulate.