Principles of western civilisation

XI TOWARDS THE FUTURE 427

tributing to fitness therein. But as the process is essentially a free unregulated fight, of which all the meaning and principles are in the present, it has of necessity tended to ultimately regulate itself at the level simply of the qualities contributing to success and survival in a struggle of such a character. When, therefore, attention is withdrawn from those superficial details of persons and causes which only maintain themselves in a more or less sheltered or artificial existence in the interstices of the business life of the time, and is concentrated on the governing realities of the commercial struggle of the modern world, we have a spectacle which is in all respects the supplement to that which we have just been considering. No student of social conditions, who looks beneath the surface of the business life of the present day in England, can doubt for a moment the existence of a deepening consciousness in the general mind of a wide interval between what may be termed the business and the private conscience of the individual in the current phase of the economic process. It may be studied in documents like the annual reports made to Parliament under the Companies’ Winding-up Act, or the report of the Special Committee appointed by the London Chamber of Commerce to inquire into secret commissions in trade. It is equally notorious in the United States. The profoundly felt sense of moral self-stultification already referred to as the daily experience of an increasing multitude, both in the ranks of capital and labour, is undoubtedly a significant social phenomenon of the time. It is to be encountered in all phases of commercial life. It is a problem which confronts