Principles of western civilisation

cHar. vil ZHE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 195

within which its exponents endeavour, for the time being, to confine it ; the inherent impetus is so much greater than that which appears to be behind the events of the centuries which at any point spread themselves before the immediate view of the historian ; the mean life-centre of the process as a whole is, from the beginning, as it still continues to be, so immeasurably remote in the future ;—that it is only when the mind is, by an effort, withdrawn to a considerable distance that we are able to hold clearly in view that governing principle of the movement with which science is, over and above everything else, concerned.

When the observer, from such a stand-point, looks along the centuries of our era in Western history he appears, at first sight, to have in view the working of the same principles of history that ruled in the epoch through which the world has passed. It is to all outward appearance the same changing conflict of peoples; the same rise and fall of nationalities ; and ever, beneath the surface of all the events of history, the same rule of force as in the past. Nevertheless the future is no longer destined to resemble the past. The controlling meaning of the social process in human history has been changed. The opposing terms in that process in the past have been the interests of the existing individual and the interests of existing society. In the phase of evolution with which we are about to be concerned in the future, a new antinomy has been opened in history. All the interests of the existing individuals, all the interests of the existing political organisation, are now about to constitute but a single term in a new antithesis. The interests of