Principles of western civilisation

CIGUAI IBIS I THE CLOSE OF AN ERA

It would be impossible for any informed observer at the present time, in the midst of our Western civilisation, to remain altogether unconscious of the character and dimensions of a vast process of change which, beneath the outward surface of events, is in progress in the world around us. The great controversies, scientiic and religious, which filled the nineteenth century, have broadened out far beyond the narrow boundaries within whicu the specialists imagined them to be confined. The older antagonists in many of these controversies still continue, as they will doubtless continue to the end, to confront each other in the same attitudes of opposition as at the beginning. But the general mind is no longer closely engaged with the past aspects of these disputes. Itis becoming more and more preoccupied with the larger problems beyond, which the new knowledge has brought fully into view, and with the immense social and political issues that are now seen to be ultimately involved.

The precursor of every great period of social and political reconstruction has invariably been, as John Stuart Mill has pointed out, ‘‘a great change in the

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