Principles of western civilisation

x THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT 355

To the emancipated intellect, which has completely divested itself of the bitterness engendered in the protracted struggle maintained against science through the ecclesiastical era in Western history, no conclusion appears to be more clearly involved in the modern evolutionary hypothesis than that, in the absence of this condition, there is not to be discovered any cause inherent in the intellect itself which could prevent human activities from being again shut up in the tyrannies of interests defined within the limits of political consciousness.

The influence of the condition here described on all the activities of the human mind amongst the advanced peoples has been profound. It has operated towards the freeing of every capacity and equipment, and towards the gradual intensification of all the conditions of progress. It has given to every department of inquiry and research the right to carry its results to that utmost limit at which they are controlled only by the results obtained in other departments of inquiry or activity with equal freedom. The results already obtained have been so great that the prestige of them has come, almost insensibly, to affect all the standards of our civilisation. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that many of the peoples included in our civilisation, who have been influenced, have accepted the results only as Eastern races have accepted Western civilisation. They have copied them without accepting the principles on which they rest; and without going through the intervening stage of development. It is, therefore, always necessary to remember that, if we have been right so far, it must be taken that, in the last resort, the maintenance of the principles to which