Principles of western civilisation

88 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

Deeply impressed as the mind may be by the position here disclosed, we must carry our scrutiny yet farther before the position, towards which we have travelled in Western thought, is fully realised. It will probably have occurred to many who have followed the argument here developed, that however representative in character, however wide in influence the views and opinions hitherto discussed, they do not include the whole outlook in modern thought. It may be said that the conception of the ascendency of the present in the social process which we see here expressing itself through the views of the English Utilitarians down to Mr. Spencer; which is represented in the literature of the Marxian movement in Germany; in the theories of the school which the writings of Professor Loria represent in modern Italy ; and which we encounter in almost every phase in current French art, literature, and philosophy ;does not characteristically present the position to which Western thought has advanced. When, however, we turn now and carry our view in yet another direction, the results are hardly less striking in any particular.

One of the most representative minds in recent English thought in that region where the theory

future and the universal. No close student of Mr. Spencer would be likely to hold the view that the author had in mind any real conception of the necessarily inherent antagonism involved between the principles governing the two classes of interests. On the contrary, Mr. Spencer has continually in view, in human history, the progress of society towards a state in which the interests of the individual shall become harmonised and identical with those of society (cf. Data of Ethics, chap. viii.) In the result there is to be found in the Synthetic Philosophy no conception of the real meaning of the class of phenomena which is accompanying in human history this progressive subordination of the individual and the present to the ends of a process, the controlling meaning of which is, of necessity, always projected beyond the limits of political consciousness.