Principles of western civilisation

336 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the State, in government, in national development, and in universal politics, it is the meaning of the struggle between the future and the present which weights all the processes of the intellect and all the developments of history. The races and peoples who are competitors in the struggle may have any theory they please of their interests, or of the ends or ideals of politics or of government. But, if the principle of Projected Efficiency be accepted as operating in society in the conditions described, then in respect of none of these alone will they retain their places in the conflict. The winning conditions in the struggle are determined. They are those of the people who already most efficiently bear on their shoulders in the present, the burden of the principles with which the meaning of a process infinite in the future is identified. Let us see, therefore, if we can follow, into the midst of the current life of the time, the application of that principle under which we see the ascendency of the present moving now towards its challenge throughout the whole range of the modern world-conflict.

If the mind is fixed on that period of Western history which begins at the point up to which we had advanced with the close of the last chapterthat is to say, with the opening of the eighteenth century, and which thence extends down into the midst of the time in which we are living — there are certain features of the epoch embraced which immediately arrest attention. Between the dates mentioned there is included an interval of time so altogether remarkable in results that to institute any real parallel between it and a previous period of history is impossible. It may be imagined that

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