Principles of western civilisation

VII THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE 217

was regarded as conformity to nature, where the wise man was held to represent a kind of stable equilibrium, where all evil in the individual was accordingly regarded as disease, we are met now by anew phenomenon. We see the religious consciousness definitely condemning as a heresy the doctrine that the individual is able by his own natural powers to fulfil the entire law, and to do every act necessary to his salvation, We have a new religious concept in the minds of men. In respect of no merely human virtue, however great, is it now regarded as possible for the individual to render himself acceptable to the Deity.

It may be noticed on every hand in the inner life of the new movement during the first centuries of its history, how great is the interval which has begun to separate us from the standards of the ancient civilisations. We see that not only has human consciousness become related to principles which transcend all the existing interests of the individual and-all the recognised aims of the State; but that the conception which underlay the whole fabric of the religious, ethical, and political life of the ancient civilisations, namely, that of an equilibrium between the conditions of virtue and the unrestrained expression in the present of human nature, is no longer recognised. Nay more, it is significant to note that it is this latter conception which is intuitively singled out for special condemnation. It is the doctrine, directly contrary to it, of the entire insufficiency of the individual in respect of his own nature to fulfil the standards required of him by any merit, however transcendent, which becomes visible as the central and fundamental