Principles of western civilisation

IX TOWARDS THE FUTURE 473

one meaning which controlled all others. It represented the culminating fact of the ascendency of the present in the process of human evolution. The universal empire towards which our civilisation moves—that universal empire the principles of which have obtained their first firm foothold in human history in that stupendous, complex, and longdrawn-out conflict of which the history of the English-speaking peoples has been the principal theatre in modern history—has a meaning which transcends this. It represents that empire in which it has become the destiny of our Western Demos, in full consciousness of the nature of the majestic process of cosmic ethics that has engendered him, to project the controlling meaning of the world-process beyond the present. All the developments that have hitherto taken place in our civilisation are but the steps leading up to the gigantic struggle now closing in upon us, as the ruling principle of a past era of human evolution moves slowly towards its challenge in the economic process in all its manifestations throughout the world.