Principles of western civilisation

VI THE ASCENDENCY OF THE PRESENT 193

the entire rights, duties, and life of the individual ; of that epoch in which the whole tendency of human development is, therefore, caught in the sweep of a vast process, in which the present is in the ascendant, and in which every impulse of the human will, and every form of human energy tends, therefore, to reach its highest potentiality in relation to desires expressing themselves in the omnipotent present. It is the culminating phase of that great epoch in the history of the race, in which all its religions are as yet primarily related to material ends; in which society has not as yet passed under the control of a meaning infinite in the future; in which, therefore, humanity itself, however efficient its purposes, however splendid its achievements, however transforming its genius, is yet, as it were, without a soul.