Principles of western civilisation

(ClsAe IT IRS WALI

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT ANTINOMY IN WESTERN HISTORY: FIRST STAGE

It is now possible for the intellect in some measure to grasp the outlines of the conflict in which the entire life and activities of our Western civilisation have begun to be involved. That principle of the evolutionary process which has been designated the law of Projected Efficiency—under the operation of which, in human society, the present is destined to be in the end controlled, not by its own interests, but by interests in the future beyond the limits of its political consciousness—has reached at last in history the stage upon which its more characteristic results begin to be visible. In the development of the great antinomy now opened in Western history, in which we have the growing definition through the stress of the centuries, of the present becoming envisaged with the principles governing a future to which it must be subordinated, we have beyond doubt the most important and imposing spectacle with which science can be concerned. All the work which has been done in other fields, in helping us to understand the governing principles of the evolutionary process in general, comes now but to subserve the main end of enabling the 239