Principles of western civilisation

vn DHE GREAT ANTINOMY: FIRST STAGE 283

in the present—in which there lay inherent that free conflict of forces out of which the greater future can alone be born, and towards which the whole process of evolution in human society must ultimately ascend—is itself imprisoned in an absolutism of the still ascendant present.

Looking back over the period through which Western history has run since the opening of the new epoch, the spectacle presented is remarkable in the last degree. The universal conditions accompanying the progress of the development here described have been scarcely less striking than the development itself.

With the rise of the spiritual authority into a position of ultimate control in the State, the progress of our Western world has been towards a condition in which an almost complete paralysis of the speculative and critical faculties of the human mind has supervened ; and in which men have sunk gradually into a stupor of ignorance and credulity. Mr. Lecky’s sombre description of the conditions of the world as they presented themselves throughout this period can hardly be considered to be overstated., The spirit which prevailed had produced a condition in thought in which, says Mr. Lecky, “the very sense of truth seemed blotted out from the minds of men.”' During these ages “every mental disposition which philosophy pronounces to be essential to a legitimate research was almost uniformly branded as a sin, and a large proportion of the most deadly intellectual vices were deliberately inculcated as virtues. ... It was sinful to study with equal attention and with an indifferent

1 The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, vol. 1. p. 397-