Principles of western civilisation

vir THE GREAT ANTINOMY: FIRST STAGE 245

remarkable result we have now to consider is, that the battle-ground, upon which the opening phase of this gigantic struggle between the present and the future is to be fought out in our civilisation, lies, of necessity, in the first place, in the centre of that system of belief in which the potentiality of this pro cess of subordination appears to be inherent. The first political idea which we see developing in the minds of men in connection with this system of belief is, in short, one in which it is considered that a rule of religion and a rule of law should again become, as in the ancient world, coincident and coextensive. Now, in the last chapter we saw how consistently, and after long struggle, the principles involved in the new system of belief overcame at last all the attempts made, in what are called the heresies of the first centuries of our era, to bring the human mind back to the self-centred standpoint of the ancient philosophy; and how profound was that instinct which in the early councils of the new religion resisted the efforts that, through the concepts of Neo-Platonism, would have closed again the very antithesis opened in the human mind wherein lay all the characteristic potentiality of the future. What we have now to watch is this same conflict assuming another form, and being raised to another plane. The objective which becomes visible in the world in the new struggle is that of a condition of society in which a rule of religion shall again be made coincident and coextensive with a rule of law, and in which there may, therefore, be observed, after a time, the same tendency to obscure that profound antithesis opened in the human mind