Principles of western civilisation

v THE PROBLEM I41

appeared in the stress of existence. Social efficiency in the first stage was, in short, by force of circumstances practically equivalent to military efficiency.

In the first epoch of social development we have, therefore, a fundamental fact clearly in sight. “Society,” as yet, can consist, as it were, of little more than a single stratum, namely, the existing members whose interests are supreme. We are regarding society in the great era of human time before the social consciousness is as yet projected beyond the present, the period of development during which the social consciousness remains rimmed within the horizon of the existing political organisation. It is, therefore, the era in which, in all the conditions of thought, “ Society” and the “State” are as yet regarded as one and the same—the era in which the existing political organisation still everywhere embraces the whole life, duties, rights, and religion of the individual in relation to all his kind. It is, in short, the longdrawn-out period of human development in which the present is in the ascendant, and in which the fact of the ascendency of the present has stamped its dominating meaning on every detail and principle of the evolutionary process in society.

Now, as we concentrate attention at this point on the process which is in progress in the evolution of society, the fact which gradually reveals itself to view is that in the development of society, just as in the evolution of life in general, a stage must at length supervene at which a new controlling principle will emerge into sight. For, as in the evolution of life in general, so in the evolution of society, it is