Principles of western civilisation

296 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

powerfully stimulative of change. But all these principles and phases of human activity were but secondary and contributory. We have to look elsewhere to see the real forces of the revolution which is destined to carry our civilisation forward into its next stage, slowly gathering round their life-centre.

Now it will be remembered that in a previous chapter we found the characteristic and distinctive feature of the inner life of the system of religious belief associated with our civilisation, to consist in a single fact which differentiated it from all other systems of belief whatever which had preceded it. There had been opened in the human mind the terms of a profound antithesis which presented certain constant and characteristic features under all conditions. It was an antithesis, we saw, which was not capable of being bridged again in any terms of the individual’s own nature, or by any principle operating within the limits of merely political consciousness.

The profound evolutionary significance of the concepts upon which this antithesis rested, in the cosmic drama in which the controlling principles of the evolutionary process were being projected out of the present in Western history, was apparent. And the fact may be recalled that, stripped of their theological garb, we saw nearly all the doctrines which the early Councils of the new religion recognised and condemned as heresies were capable of being reduced to a single meaning. They nearly all represented, as we observed, the attempt, under one form or another, to weaken or attenuate the terms or the meaning of this profound antithesis.