Principles of western civilisation

302 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the controversy of the period we see, indeed, the question at issue presenting itself to various minds as if it involved nothing more than the claims of particular organisations of the religious consciousness to authoritatively represent the system of belief associated with our civilisation. But the problem to be solved involves, of necessity, the release into the world of a principle inherent in that system of belief which transcends the terms of such a controversy; a principle destined to carry the human mind forward towards a new synthesis of knowledge—nay, towards such a conception of the nature of absolute truth itself, which has not, as yet, dawned on the minds of any of the parties involved.

As we follow the movement in progress in the world, we see, therefore, how that it continues to be carried forward in one direction by the same inherent momentum proceeding from the system of ideas of which the development was traced in the last chapter. The concepts of the movement known as the Reformation, which endeavoured to project the sense of individual responsibility beyond the principle of authority now conceived as resident in the organised Church, were in their very nature incompatible with the ideal which had come to hold the mind of the world. The leaders of the revolution in reality challenged the very life-principle of that ideal. The concepts which they represented could, we see now, never be reconciled with it. The position which the movement of the Reformation involved could, in short, from its essential nature, and from the beginning, only be recognised as a movement of rebellion striking at the root of that principle of authority around