Principles of western civilisation

IV WESTERN LIBERALISM 107

than any single writer of the period, to influence both directly and indirectly throughout Western Europe the subsequent development of the theory of the modern State.

Now if we take the political works of these two writers and analyse them carefully at the present time—following the principles enunciated by Hobbes into the form in which they become developed by Locke*—the result is very striking. We descend at once, as it were, beneath the surface of things into a region of twilight where, as in a vast workshop, we see being slowly extended the great framework of principles on which the modern theory of society has been reared. As we traverse backwards and forwards this region of realities, and begin to understand the nature of the spectacle before us, the effect on the mind is remarkable. Here we see are all the doctrines of the French Revolution, and of a later era of Democracy. Here is the doctrine of “the state of nature,” of the ‘social contract,” of the “sovereign people.” Here also is the doctrine of the native equality of men, of the separation of Church and State, and of fundamental principles resident in society and limiting the powers of legislators and of governments. They are the doctrines round which the stress of the political life of our Western world has since centred. They are doctrines of which the greater number are accepted at the present day as first principles in the teaching which Democracy is offered at the hands of its interpreters. + Compare ch. xii.-xxxii. in Hobbes’ Levdathan (Sir William Molesworth’s edition, 1839), and the three essays Lzberty, Dominion, Religion, with Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. vk. ii.