Principles of western civilisation

I THE CLOSE OF AN ERA 15

onward, including Kant’s Crz¢zgue and the Darwinian hypothesis itself, have direct relations to fundamental intellectual conceptions of this movement. In whatever light we regard it, we are bound to consider the movement, as a whole, as the channel through which, in modern times, the main stream of the evolutionary process has come down through Western history. The system of ideas associated with it is that under which the most important development in modern history has taken place—the process of expansion in which a few millions of the least significant of Western peoples have, within two centuries, become a fourth of the white population of the world, and under which some five-twelfths of the human race have passed under the direct influence of their government, laws, and institutions.”

1 Kant’s work in the Crzfzgue presented itself to its author (cf. Kant’s Introduction to the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic) as a criticism of Hume’s fundamental position that the content of the human mind is related to experience. This is the position which has been closely associated with the utilitarlan movement in England, and which has since received its most characteristic expression in English thought in Mr. Herbert Spencer’s philosophy. The principal conception upon which the Darwinian hypotheses is based took shape in Darwin’s mind after reading Malthus’s 7heory of Population, one of the most characteristic productions of the English Utilitarians (cf. Life and Letters of Darwin, by his son, F. Darwin, vol. i.)

? The total population of the United States and Dependencies, and of the British Empire with Dependencies and Protectorates, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was 522 millions. Speaking of the position of the white races at the beginning of the twentieth century Sir R. Giffen says: ““The population of Europe and of nations of European origin, like the United States, might now be put at something over 500 millions. The United States themselves might be put at nearly 80 millions; Russia in its recent census showed a population which must already have grown to about 135 millions; Germany about 55 millions; the United Kingdom, with the self-governing colonies of Canada and Australasia and the white population of South Africa, 55 millions; Austria-Hungary, 45 millions; France, 40 millions ; Italy, 32 millions; Spain and Portugal, 25 millions; Scandinavian countries, 10 millions; Holland and Belgium, 10 millions; and other European countries, 20 millions. A century ago the corresponding figure to