Modernizers within Brazil's traditional society were in desperate need of intellectual reinforcement for their position. A new ideology which would reorganize and re-explain the nature of their social and institutional environment and which would logically link their work to a meaningful goal could be emotionally satisfying while simultaneously advancing the effort to win over converts. Not surprisingly, this group scoured the resources of Europe in search of useful ideas for this purpose. It is a mistake to consider them, as is sometimes done, as alienated intellectuals agape before Europeans and merely swept along by the prestige of an idea's source. It is also only partially correct to say they failed to understand the full meaning of the ideas they found there, for as they understood them, these concepts were exactly what they were searching for. If they sometimes devoured their intellectual fare without reference to context or logical affinity, as if having red wine with fish, this was because they craved only certain kinds of sustenance and could well afford to forget the niceties of consistency, thorough understanding, and intellectual rigor. Indeed, they exerted surprising though unconscious creativity in establishing the criteria of selection: for they adopted primarily those ideas that served a function within the process of modernization in Brazil.

Ideas which could relate progress, science, and industry to each other had a special appeal for those who were working to destroy the traditional society. The thought of Herbert Spencer did this admirably well, for they understood him to be saying that progress was inevitable, that it led to an industrial future, and that science proved the validity of both assertions.