Principles of western civilisation

VI THE ASCENDENCY OF THE PRESENT tox

been the prime force behind the struggle for liberty in all its modern phases; namely, the assumption that the principles to which individual liberty, as individual life, is ultimately related, transcend all the purposes of the existing political State. It is the same as to the phenomenon of Democracy. The comparisons which Grote instituted between ancient and modern Democracy—the ideas involved in which may be traced through the phase of thought represented in the modern utilitarian movement—are entirely superficial.’ It is not simply that Democracy in the ancient world rested on slavery. The difference goes far deeper than this. That deep-lying assumption, which may be distinguished beneath the surface in all the crises of political life in the modern world, and which, in that world, has slowly undermined the foundations of an earlier order of society—namely, the assumption that in the last resort we have a duty, not only to our fellow-creatures, but to principles which tran-

1 The distinct feature of these studies is the absence of any really scientific perception of the meaning in human evolution of the interval which divides the modern conception of the State—with those standards of conduct and duty in the individual upon which that conception rests—from the ideal of the State in the ancient world. Austin in England, in the special department of jurisprudence, applied the principles to which Bentham had sought to give more general effect. ‘‘ Plato,” said D. C. Heron, writing about the time of Austin’s death, and at the period of the ascendency of the utilitarian theories of society in England (H7story of Jurisprudence, 1860), ‘‘ considered that all human duties came within the province and control of public authority . . . assuredly in our present imperfect state of knowledge and development we cannot say with certainty that a time may not come when, in accordance with the theory of Plato, all the virtues may be so enforced.” This confusion still widely prevails. It is, for instance, impossible at the present time to take up any considerable study in the current political literature of Western Europe or America without becoming aware that there are in progress in our midst political movements, enlisting in their activities much earnest endeavour and thought, in which the argument and discussion still proceeds, in the last resort, upon the assumption that the accepted conception of the modern State is the same as that which prevailed in the ancient world.