Principles of western civilisation

x THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT 357

transition undoubtedly pregnant of changes more transforming than any that have been hitherto experienced—that we catch a glimpse of the full reach of the causes which are producing the stress of conditions in that phase of the evolutionary process unfolding itself beneath our eyes in modern history.

In the realm of political affairs the conception of responsibility to a principle rising superior to the claims of all systems of thought, of knowledge, of authority, or of welfare embodied within the limits of political consciousness, has proved the most radical principle that has ever operated in the world. It is the ultimate cause behind that organic process of change which Maine saw reversing the universal order of the past in the phenomenon of modern Democracy.! It has broken, in turn, the theory of absolute right in the Church, in the Sovereign, in the State. It is destined to break the absolute right of Majorities, and even of Force. It has brought to the birth, in the long process of the centuries, the modern conception of the People. And only the vision of the few has caught a glimpse of the nature of the transformation inherent in it, as it moves slowly in our time towards the challenge of the ascendency of the present in the economic process throughout the world.

Now it may be observed that the first purely political cause which has operated directly towards the production of the present intensity of the social process in Western history, is one which is rarely discussed in any detail, and is often not mentioned, in treatises on social or economic subjects. This is

1 Popular Government, i. and iv.