More infamously,he also said that only in the state "does man have rational existence". He believed that christianity was the perfect religion of the emerging age of modernity because it reflected its spirit or geist - faith in reason and truth. However, because of the process of contradiction known as "dialectic". the social structures and institutions that people create to serve them can instead come to control and even enslave them. The process of rational self discovery can lead to "alienation" a concept of estrangement that went on to have a profound influence on the social sciences.