Principles of western civilisation

338 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

of life and thought throughout the entire fabric of our civilisation. It matters not in what direction we look, the character of the revolution which has been effected is the same. In inventions, in commerce, in the arts of civilised life, in most of the theoretical and applied sciences, and in nearly every department of investigation and research, the progress of Western knowledge and equipment during the period in question has been striking beyond comparison. In many directions it has been so great that it undoubtedly exceeds in this brief period the sum of all the previous advance made by the race.

A significant feature, too, is that the process of change and progress has continued, and still continues, to grow in intensity. The results obtained, for instance, during the nineteenth century, altogether exceed in range and magnitude those achieved during the eighteenth. The results of the second half of the nineteenth century similarly surpass in importance those of the first half. And yet never before has the expectancy with which the world waits on the future been so intense as in the time at which we have arrived. There is scarcely an important department of practical or of speculative knowledge which is not pregnant with possibilities greater than any that have already been achieved. Such is the nature of existing Western conditions, that there is scarcely any appliance of civilisation, however well established; scarcely any invention, however all-embracing its hold on the world, which the well-informed mind is not prepared to see entirely superseded within a comparatively brief period in the future.