Principles of western civilisation

I THE CLOSE OF AN ERA 3

—have all but accomplished the first stage of their work.

The extraordinary reach of the changes which the evolutionary doctrine is, to all appearance, destined to accomplish is not as yet fully perceived by any school of thought. But, if the attempt be made to grasp the application of what we may now distinguish to be one of its central principles, some general idea may be obtained of the remarkable character of the results towards which our Western world is rapidly moving.

Hitherto nearly all the systems of political and social philosophy that have controlled the mind of our civilisation, and all the schemes of human conduct and of human interest which they have involved, have had one !eading feature in common. They have been all cénsidered, in effect, to revolve round a fixed and central principle ; namely, the interests of the existing individuals considered either separately as individuals, or collectively as members of political society. But the point of view in all these attempts has been altered by a revolution, the significance of which is without any parallel in the history of thought. For what we are coming to see is that, if we accept the law of Natural Selection as a controlling principle in the process of our social evolution, we must, by inherent necessity, also accept it as operating in the manner in which, in the long-run, it produces the largest and most effective results. Our attention throughout the course of human history has been concentrated hitherto on the interests of the individuals who for the time being comprised what we call society. Yet what we are now brought to see is