Principles of western civilisation

98 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

paralysing contradictions resulting from the attempt are a characteristic feature of the time. The most striking spectacle in modern history, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, is the position arising, not only in internal politics, but in international relations, from the endeavour to represent the meaning of the world-process, in the midst of which we are living, by a business theory of the State. Following the analysis in the preceding chapters we have only to read between the lines of Professor Ritchie's examination! of the formulas of ‘‘ Natural Rights,” which modern thought has essayed to put into the mouth of Demos, from the French Revolution onwards, to realise in what irretrievable ruin the theories which have accompanied that attempt lie around us at the present time.

In what, then, consists the ultimate claim of Western Liberalism as a principle of progress? It cannot represent simply the claim of the interests in the present to be the dominant factor in the evolutionary process, as we have seen that claim expressed in the conceptions of utilitarianism, and in the theories alike of Nietzsche and of Marx. Nor can it be the claim of individualism. For how could the individual be greater than society? Nor can it be the claim of the majority to rule. For to attempt to reduce the individuals, comprised even within our own civilisation at the present day, to the rule of the majority, would be to attempt to put the world’s progress back a thousand years. Nay, it would be undoubtedly to provoke from the advanced peoples, and even from many of the advocates of universal peace amongst them,

1 Natural Rights, by David G, Ritchie.