Principles of western civilisation

402 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the modern era; the struggle inherent in, and proceeding from the development described in the preceding chapters ; namely, that in which there is ultimately involved the challenge of the ascendency of the present in the economic process throughout the world. That the result is destined to be enlarging and reconstructive beyond that associated with any previous period of transition in our history, no mind which has grasped the principles of the situation can ultimately doubt.

Now, standing at the present time in the midst of what may be called the first stage of the competitive era in Western history, it is necessary, in endeavouring to understand the future tendencies of our civilisation, to first of all recall before the mind a fact of the evolutionary process which, although it has been involved from the beginning in the principle of Projected Efficiency, brings to the mind even at this stage a certain feeling of surprise, when it is clearly and succinctly stated. It may be observed that in considering the recent past of the evolutionary process in the modern world, the outward feature with which we have been principally occupied has been capable of being summed up in the single word—emancipation. The period has been one of the general enfranchisement of all the conditions and forms of human activity. It has been the era of the emancipation of creeds and of commerce, of industry and of thought, of individuals, of classes, and of nationalities. In the literature of the forward movement in the modern world we follow the tendencies of progress in a period of history through which the glorification of this principle of freedom