Principles of western civilisation

x1 TOWARDS THE FUTURE 435

is associated has proceeded from the fundamental position taken up by that school in the two phases of the competitive era already described.

Now, if we recall the character of the movement in Western history towards economic freedom, of which Schmoller described the first stages in our civilisation, it will be found that its leading features have a strongly marked character. This movement, as we have before pointed out, represented in the past—and contrary to the impression which might have been received of it from the theories of the Manchester school—no automatic process unfolding itself without stress in history, in obedience to the dictates of existing interest. On the contrary, every step in it was resisted, and resisted in perfect good faith and with intelligence, by the interests concerned. It was zof to the immediate interest of the town to have its economic life merged in that of the territory. It similarly was zo¢ to the advantage of the territory, in turn, to have its economic life merged in that of the national State. The fiercest conflict against the process was waged at all points; and the opposition was borne down only in the presence of a larger overruling cause, which already represented, in effect, the subordination of the present to the future. It was, in short, around those inchoate ideals which embodied this principle of the subordination of the present to the future—ideals imperfectly described by Schmoller as those of nationality or state-making—that the whole process of economic development centred.

It will be remembered how, in the relations of

* We have a phase of the same idea represented in Professor Giddings’ theory of kinship as a factor in the evolutionary process in society.