Principles of western civilisation

308 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

to develop and to pass, before the relationship, to every phase of social evolution included under the head of modern progress, of the cause which had thus begun to project the controlling principles of the religious consciousness beyond the theory of the State, beyond the widest limits of political consciousness, beyond all the forms and principles under which the ascendency of the present had hitherto expressed itself, is to be clearly grasped by the Western intellect. But the first great crisis in Western history in which this transition is in process of accomplishment has been passed.

Looking at the world over which the storm of the Reformation has passed, it presents at first sight an extraordinary spectacle in the uncertain light of the grey morning of the modern world. Our Western civilisation has moved into an epoch of which the ruling principle is to be entirely different from any which has ever prevailed in the world before. Viewing the system of belief associated with that civilisation—in its aspect as a developmental principle in history—an immense interval is destined to be placed between its evolutionary significance in the future and its import as an evolutionary cause under the principles which had prevailed in the past. Yet looking out over Europe immediately after the events just described, it is remarkable to see how profoundly unconscious the human mind remains, and is yet for long to remain, of the potentiality of principles underlying the result which has been accomplished, and of the nature of the goal towards which the life-processes of Western civilisation have now begun to be carried rapidly forward.