Principles of western civilisation

466 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

than all outward forms of politics and of governments, has its seat in the growing sense of organic unity amongst this group of peoples as the conscious representatives in history of the principles through which the main stream of the evolutionary process in Western history has come down from the past in our civilisation, and is descending towards the future in the world.

When the adjustments in respect of natural and legitimate aspirations that have not been satisfied in the past have been made, there can, in short, be no doubt as to the nature of the future towards which our civilisation is drawing in this respect. The day of such concepts of nationality, as express merely the tribal or local egoisms of a people, would appear to be over. What we must expect to see in the future towards which we are moving, is the life of the world, under the lead of our civilisation, converging gradually towards a stage at which the rivalry will be between a few great, clearly defined systems of social order; these systems being, in the last resort, nothing more or less than different outward expressions, in terms of the social and economic life of the included peoples, of that principle of the subordination of the present to the future with which the meaning of our civilisation has been from the beginning identified in the evolutionary process. And in the eventual worldrivalry between these systems the determining factor of success will undoubtedly be the degree of efficiency with which this principle has obtained expression in the life-processes of the included peoples.

For the peoples who represent the advancing front of the development we have thus traced