Principles of western civilisation

vil THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 211

that religion, underlying all its phases, however varied, however obscure, one central phenomenon which constitutes not only the essential fact of its inner life, but the distinctive principle to which its evolutionary significance is related. It is the opening in the individual mind of the terms of a profound antithesis, of which the characteristic feature always remains the same ; namely, that it is incapable of being again bridged or closed by any principle operating merely within the limits of present consciousness. It is this antithesis which represents the expression in the individual of that principle in human evolution which is in the ascendant in modern civilisation, and which is characteristic of that civilisation. But it is an antithesis which is not represented either in the philosophy or in the history of the ancient world.

When we search carefully through the literature of the higher philosophy of the pagan world at the point at which the Christian movement begins to impinge upon it, it may be perceived that there is also a principle which is absolutely characteristic of the ancient philosophy. Throughout all the phases of Greek thought, and not least where it reaches its noblest expression in the highest minds, it may be distinguished that the condition of virtue was regarded as a kind of stable equilibrium within the bounds of social or political consciousness. There was no conception of any antithesis in the mind of the individual within these limits. The wise man was essentially the virtuous man. It was the business of the wise man to discover the laws of the world around him to which he was subject, and to conform to them. We have seen how the principle