Principles of western civilisation

122 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the complement and supplement of corresponding theories in the domain of moral philosophy and of religion. In the corresponding theory in moral philosophy the tendency has been to assert that in the last resort human conduct requires no principle of support whatever other than that of self-interest in society well understood. In the corresponding theory in religion, the tendency has accordingly been to assert, with equal emphasis, that the tendency of the evolutionary process in human history is to empty the concepts of the system of belief associated with our civilisation of that distinctive quality which projects their significance beyond the limits of political consciousness. Under all three forms we are regarding, we see, but the different and closely related phases of a single movement in Western history. The fundamental conception underlying them all is the same. It is the conception that it is possible to express the meaning of our social evolution, just as it was expressed in the civilisations of the ancient Greek and Roman world, namely, by a mere theory of human interests comprised within the limits of political consciousness.

In France of the present day it is impossible to come into contact with the higher thought of the nation at any point without feeling how completely that unanalysed element, which in the theories of Hobbes and Locke had projected the controlling principles of society outside the limits of political consciousness, has been eliminated from the synthesis of knowledge associated with the theory of Western Liberalism. In the current life of the French people all those sociological symptoms which

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