Principles of western civilisation

CHAPTER VII

THE PASSING OF THE PRESENT UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE FUTURE

In that epoch of social evolution which begins in Western civilisation with the gradual break up of the political fabric of the Roman empire, we have developed from the outset upon the stage of the world the terms of a profound antinomy. Nothing like it has before been presented in the evolutionary process in life ; and it is only slowly, and as the mind is able to take in the full reach of the principles involved, that the significance of the struggle between the forces representing the two opposing terms therein is realised.

Almost the first conclusion which takes definite shape in the mind, after prolonged study of the development in history which opens with the rise into ascendency of the principles of the system of religious belief associated with the era in which we are living, is that it is impossible to form any true conception, either of the reach or of the import of the process unfolding itself in our Western world, from observation of it in the midst of the events to which it at any period gives rise. The meaning of the development in progress so evidently transcends the limits of every form and of every institution

194