Principles of western civilisation

232 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

evolutionist, however, only begins to realise to the full when he catches sight of the first working in history of that principle to which prominence was given in a previous chapter, and to which the ultimate meaning of every phase of Western history down into the time in which we are living, continues to be closely related:—namely, that from necessity, inherent in the conditions under which Natural Selection can act, it is only the peoples amongst whom the qualities contributing to efficiency in the present have reached the highest development, that can hold the stage of the world during the period in which it becomes the destiny of the present to pass under the control of the future.

In the middle of the seventh century the Western world was almost suddenly confronted with the rise and spread of Mohammedanism. Looking at this system of belief at the present day in the light of the principle of development we have been discussing throughout, there can be no doubt as to its relation to a lower stage of the evolutionary process than that which the potentiality of the movement in progress in Western history at the time of its rise represented. It is not simply in respect of what may be termed the lower concepts of Mohammedanism that this assertion has to be made. It has to be noted that even in the highest concepts of this form of belief there is to be distinguished only the same restricted evolutionary significance which we saw, on analysis, was to be attached to the characteristic heresies of the early period of Christianity. Nevertheless, in a short period Mohammedanism swept over the vast regions associated with the origin of Christianity, practically accom-