Principles of western civilisation

400 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

There is no exaggeration in any of these respects of the transformation in knowledge which we see accomplished under our eyes. There can be no mistake as to the impetus it must give to a farreaching process of change. On whatever side we extend our vision the effect of the illumination continues to be distinguished. As the mind travels slowly over the outlines of the developmental process in Western history we have endeavoured to describe, the containing significance is unmistakable. The existence of the necessity in the evolutionary process which must sooner or later subordinate the present and all its interests to the interests of a future which is infinite; the nature of the supreme concepts associated with the era in which we are living, by which the human mind has risen to a sense of personal responsibility to a principle of sacrifice cosmic in its significance ; the character of the resulting, slowly developing movement in our civilisation, the potentiality of which, entirely different from any represented in the ancient world, has in consequence been from the beginning to project the controlling centre of the evolutionary process beyond the contents of principles operating merely within the limits of political consciousness; the resulting gradual dissociation in Western history of the religious consciousness from all alliance with the powers and purposes of the State, in that prolonged struggle in which the human mind has risen to the conception of truth expressing itself as the resultant of forces apparently in themselves conflicting ; the consequent slow disintegration, still in progress, of all the absolutisms in opinion, in government, in ethics, in religion,