Principles of western civilisation

Cree iE Rx THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT

As soon as the mind has endeavoured to realise the nature of the position outlined in the last chapter, it is impossible to avoid receiving a deep impression of the significance of its bearing on the complex movement of development, which, under many phases, is unfolding itself beneath our eyes in the modern world-process. If we have been right so far, we appear to have in sight a single controlling principle, the operation of which divides, as by a clear line of demarcation, the meaning of the era in which we are living from that of all the past history of the race. We are regarding an integrating process, the larger meaning of which is still in the future, the first stages of which have occupied nearly two thousand years, and into the influence of which all the tendencies of development in our civilisation are being slowly and increasingly drawn. The impression made at first sight on the mind by the character of the position reached loses nothing on reflection. On the contrary, the tendency is rather for it to grow and deepen as the nature of the transition in which the future is being emancipated in history is better understood. In the modern conflict between tendencies in ethics, in 335