Principles of western civilisation

Il THE POSITION IN MODERN THOUGHT 71

As we watch the statement of the principles of individual and of social conduct, as they begin to be put forward on the eve of the French Revolution in the writings of Condillac, Helvétius, Diderot, D’Alembert, and others, we may distinguish how Western thought had at this point already begun to revolve round a fixed idea. In politics the phase under which the ruling conception tends to express itself is unmistakable. The conception of the State, efficiently organised to serve the ends of its existing members, is the pivot upon which every principle of political and social science is made to turn. “Society ” is, as we see, conceived from the outset of the movement as consisting of the existing citizens organised towards their own benefit. The ‘good of Society” and the interests of the existing citizens are everywhere regarded as identical or interconvertible terms. And the content of the welfare of society is always conceived and spoken of as if it was of necessity included in the view which these citizens took of their own interests.

From this point forward, throughout all the literature of the Revolution, we see the developmental process in Western history presented as a process in which the “will of the sovereign people” is tending to progressively realise itself, simply in the interests of the people as organised in the State. In the ideals of Rousseau, as in the later conceptions of Marx, it is the theory of the interests of the people collectively organised in the State which constitutes the science of society. In the theory of social development towards which we are carried, it is, therefore, the economic factor, z.e. the interest of the existing individuals, which is everywhere presented to us as