Principles of western civilisation

IV WESTERN LIBERALISM 131

interpretation of history was always materialistic. If this, indeed, be all the import of two thousand years of our civilisation, the meaning of its stress and suffering, the end of its icleals of self-sacrifice before which we have agonised : then be it so. Who, then, amongst us does not already feel his nostrils dilate and his pagan heart swell again against his bosom at the very insolence of the demands which the claims of Western Liberalism imply. To your tents, O Israel! What inheritance have we in the “sympathies” which enslave us? We are the superiors. We are the stronger. A new commandment, O my brethren, I put over you. Become hard. It is the materialistic interpretation of history |!

And so our survey has reached the horizon. Looking back over the course of the evolutionary process in human society, and then concentrating attention on the phases of thought which have just been considered, it seems impossible to resist the conclusion which presents itself. Theories and discussions as to the economics of the modern world only serve to disguise the underlying fact of central significance in the developments we have followed namely, the retreat which has taken place all along the line to the stand-point of the ancient world. The controlling meaning of the evolutionary process in human society is in all of them once more frankly and avowedly posited within the bounds of political consciousness. In none of the developments that have been passed in review is there, in short, to be distinguished the claim by which Western Liberalism can alone be justified as the controlling principle of progress in the modern world, namely, its claim to project the meaning of the social process in Western