“The Poshkenonian reconciles himself to his wonders happening in twenty-seven lands and forty kingdoms away. The Londoner wants his wonders today, right now, right here. And therefore chooses the trusties road to his fairy tales – a road paved with astronomic, physical, and chemical formulas, a road rolled flat and solid by the cast-iron laws of the exact sciences. This may seem paradoxical at first – exact science and fairy tale, precision and fantasy. But it is so, and must be so. For a myth is always, openly or implicitly, connected with religion, and the religion of the modern city is precise science. Hence, the natural link between the newest urban myth, urban fairy tale, and science.”
Yevgeni Zamyatin H. G. Wells, 1922 reprinted in A Soviet Heretic translated by Mirra Ginsburg, University of Chicago Press, 1970 pp. 260-61, cited in H. G. Wells The Time Machine: Centennial Edition edited by John Lawton p. 90-1.
On the other hand:
Weber on Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic
Tawney on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
It may not be of the nature of man to overcome myth, merely displace it.
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 