Principles of western civilisation

118 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

As we, therefore, turn over the pages of Burke at the present day in the light of the position outlined beneath the modern evolutionary development, it is impossible to resist a feeling of profound surprise. For Burke, we see, had, even at the date in question, risen to the height of perceiving society as science will undoubtedly perceive it in the future —that is to say, as a living and developing organism, the centre of whose life amongst the progressive peoples can nevermore be in the present time, and the science of whose life can, therefore, nevermore be regarded as the science of the interests of the present time or of the existing political State. We see Burke, accordingly, propounding the doctrine, already becoming strange to the theorists of the French Revolution, that even the whole people have no right to make a law prejudicial to the whole community. We see him, therefore, vehemently asserting, as against the prevailing theories of his time, that society could never be considered as a mere partnership for the mutual profit of its existing members. For “society,” as he declared, was a “ partnership, not only between those who are living, but between those who are living and those who are dead and those who are to be born.” Nay more, we see him speaking of the “social contract” itself as a contract which, if it ever existed, could be no more than “a clause in the great contract of eternal society.” *

1 ¢ Society,” said Burke, ‘‘is, indeed, a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure; but the State ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence,