Principles of western civilisation

136 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

in society around us must in the end stand in subservient and subordinate relationship to interests which cannot, in the nature of things, be included within any boundaries of merely political consciousness. If, therefore, the process of social order in the midst of which we are living in Western history be destined to maintain its place in the future, that principle of the evolutionary process brought into prominence in a previous chapter must be held to apply to it; and we may say that, in the scientific formula of its life, the interests of the existing individuals possess neither place nor meaning, except in so far as they are included in, and are subordinate to, the interests of a developing system of order the overwhelming proportion of whose members are still in the future. We may have any opinions whatever about our own interests or those of society. But, as J. Novicow points out, except the ideal we have in view conforms to the natural laws which are governing the evolutionary process as a whole, all our desires and attempts to permanently realise it are no more than—to use this writer's phrase—‘‘de purs gaspillages,” vain efforts flung waste and squandered beneath the wheels of destiny.*

1 One of the commonest errors to be met with in discussions as to the ultimate principles of society is that man has become gifted with some power peculiar to himself of suspending the cosmic process, and of substituting for it another of his own imagining. ‘‘ La faculté de prévoir,” says M. Novicow, “est la source de tous les progrés de ’humanité. Imaginer un état a venir est la seul moyen d’en désirer la réalisation. Mais cet idéal peut ne pas étre conforme aux lois naturelles. Il peut constituter une véritable utopie. Alors tous les efforts pour le mettre en practique sont de purs gaspillages qui ralentissent le taux d’accroissement du bien étre. Déterminer la trajectoire

dune force naturelle et s’abandonner 4 son courant, c’est tout le progrés. Prévoir l’avenir, signifie se soumettre aux lois de la nature. Or la science