Principles of western civilisation

x THE MODERN WORLD-CONFLICT 369

where in the ascendant. The tendency which has projected itself through the whole fabric of economic society at the present time represents, in short, nothing more than the survival into existing conditions of that universal principle of a past era of evolution which it has been the destiny of our civilisation from the beginning to interrupt and suspend; namely, the tendency of the strongest competitive force to become absolute, and so to restrain, and in time suppress, the conditions of free competition. This, as we have seen, is the condition which our civilisation has already broken in thought, in knowledge, and in politics, in the long stress of the centuries of conflict already described. But it is the condition which still remains almost unregulated and unbroken in economics. There runs, accordingly, it may be seen, through all the phases of current economic development one consistent and integrating principle. The story of the economic conflict in modern history is now in turn coming to be simply the story of the long-drawn-out struggle between two opposing forces in the great antinomy, the course of which we have traced through Western history. On the one side we have represented the survival of the old-world law of an earlier era of evolution, through which every existing dominant force endeavours, in its Own interests, to shut down in the present upon the higher potentialities of society in the future. On the other side, we have the influence of the fundamental conception inherent in our civilisation, which, in gradually projecting the sense of human responsibility outside the limits of all political creeds and interests, is—in economics as 2B

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