Principles of western civilisation

94 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

sent, and the elimination from society of every cause, sentiment, principle, and belief which prevents the strongest interest in the present from realising itself.

As the evolutionist looks back, therefore, over the history of the clearly defined movement in modern thought, in which the endeavour has been more and more authoritatively made to interpret to us the phenomenon of our Western democracy, he sees that it is justifiable to make in respect of ita deeply significant assertion. It is that this movement—in all the phases in which it has contemplated the ascendency of the interests of the present in the evolutionary process, and in which, therefore, we see it identifying the interests of society with the interests of the individuals comprised within the limits of political consciousness—has not carried the theory of society, in any scientific principle, a step beyond the position which it occupied twenty-three centuries ago in Greek thought. It is the theory of the State alone which we again encounter in all the developments of the time. In modern thought, as we see it represented in this movement, the interest of the State has become again, just as in the Greek civilisation, the ultimate principle in the science of society, the controlling end in the theory of human conduct. The State itself has become, to use the words of Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, an “ étre mystérieux dont tant de prétendus sages prononcent le nom avec adoration, que tous les hommes invoquent, que tous se disputent, et qui semble étre le seul dieu auquel le monde moderne veuille garder respect et confiance.1 We have returned, as it were, to the stand-point of the ancient world, when

1 [Etat moderne et ses fonctions, par Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, p. 25.