Principles of western civilisation

x THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT 367

society be correct—is impossible, namely, the task of getting a scientific conception of society out of

a theory of interests in the State bounded by the

limits of political consciousness. Deep down in the subconsciousness of the progressive movement amongst the advanced peoples, we have always to deal, in the last resort, with a fact of different significance. In every period of upheaval it is to be encountered in the general mind in the shape of a conviction widely and instinctively held, that while Western Liberalism is the force which is transforming all political institutions, it is itself a thing which is ultimately outside of all theories of the State, and independent of, and superior to all interests in the State on whatever scale they may be represented.

This is the ultimate cause why the meaning of Modern Liberalism in England and the United States goes far deeper than political forms and institutions. It represents a cause which, while acting on every institution within the State, is nevertheless ultimately related to principles transcending the consciousness of all of them alike. Whatever the outward forms, it, therefore, holds every tendency to absolutism in continued check. It interposes, as it were, between the present and the future a principle which prevents every natural despotism in thought and action from exercising its inherent tendency to again shut down upon us. It represents, in short, the progressive development, as it has reached the domain of politics, of the great antinomy we have traced through Western history.

If the examination be continued beyond the intellectual and political causes which are thus making

——