Principles of western civilisation

CHAPTER V

THE PROBLEM

THe main features of the problem with which we are concerned in the study of Western society now begin to present themselves in outline. There is no form of contemporary literature in which the deep human interest of that spectacle has as yet found any adequate expression. There is no department of knowledge in which there has yet arisen a writer who has brought within the full grasp of the intellect the significance which it will almost certainly present in the eyes of future generations. If we have been right so far, neither the meaning of modern Democracy, nor of Western Liberalism, nor of the social process in the era in which we are living, can any longer be conceived as capable of being expressed in any mere theory of political or of economic interests in the State. We are living in the midst of a type of social order which can only have come to hold its place in the past, and which can only continue to hold its place in the future, in respect of one ruling quality alone, namely, its own fitness in the never-relaxed strain and stress of an ascending process of evolution, And the ruling principle of that process of increasing efficiency is, as we have seen it, that every interest of the present 135