Principles of western civilisation

384 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

which the world is destined to pass in the future towards which we continue to move.

When in the light of this process we turn now and look back over the development of which Schmoller described the first stages,’ it has, we must observe, become pregnant with a larger meaning. A principle that we now perceive to be inherent in it has become visible. In the earlier phases of the progress of the economic process towards intensity and efficiency through the extension of the areas of economic freedom in ever larger and larger communities, we saw the process of economic development in Western history centring round those ‘inchoate ideals which Schmoller, for want of a better expression, described as ideals of “ Nationality” or of “State-making.”* So far as the basis of these ideals presented itself consciously to the human mind in early times, it doubtless represented little more than the expression of the tribal or local egoism characteristic of a former era of evolution. But the deeper import of the process at a later stage has now become visible. A higher consciousness than that of mere nationality has begun to express itself through it.

As with the growth of knowledge the peoples who occupy the foremost place in our civilisation at the present day come to realise the tremendous significance in the world of those principles of free conflict of which they have become the representatives in history; as they begin to realise that it is through the long stress of their history that these principles have been born into the world; as they come to realise in particular that in the open stress

1 The Mercantile Theory. 2 Cf. Jbzd., pp. 16, 50, 51.

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