Principles of western civilisation

326 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

stitution just quoted, we have in Western history the first complete expression remaining unchanged to the present day, of the actual projection of the controlling consciousness of the system of religious belief associated with our civilisation beyond all the forms and principles of the present ; beyond the content of all systems of authority whatever in which it had hitherto been imprisoned within the bounds of political consciousness. The most significant turning-point within the horizon of Western history had been passed. Unseen, unrealised; to be for centuries yet but tacitly acknowledged, but dimly comprehended, or even entirely misunderstood of men, the ruling principle of a new era in the developmental process at work in human history had risen into ascendency in the world.

Along one line of intellectual development the Western mind has yet to reach, in the inexorable events of the historical process, the import of the fact already visible through the analysis undertaken in Chapter II1].—namely, that there is not, and that there never will be, amongst the peoples to whom the future belongs, any ultimate sanction for the principle of such tolerance in the State as can emancipate the future, save that furnished by a conviction of responsibility in the human mind transcending the content of all interests within the limits of political consciousness—before the real nature is fully perceived of the tremendous problem with which the human mind has wrestled in the cosmic stress of the centuries of our era that have passed.’

1 The scientific side of the position with which Kant closed in the Crztzgue of Pure Reason, and in the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic, henceforward becomes clearly visible in the historical process.

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