Principles of western civilisation

vir THE GREAT ANTINOMY: FIRST STAGE 253

visible line projected into the future, between the living and the dead, between the peoples whose work no longer belongs to the future, and those through whose activities and ideals it becomes the destiny of the race to see the main current of the world’s history descend towards the ages to come.

As we turn now and watch the unfolding of this development in Western history, we may observe how predestined, as it were, by inherent necessity are the lines upon which it begins to move. To every student who has endeavoured to thoroughly master any section of European history comprised in the Middle Ages there must come, at some stage of his work, the same experience. As soon as he has got deeply into his subject he begins to be possessed, to an ever-increasing degree, with a sense of the limitations under which he must labour—however well equipped he may be in every other respect—if he endeavours to understand the section before him apart from the larger organic process which is proceeding beneath the face of Western history. It matters not in what department of political or of social development, or even in the history of what country, the study is pursued. When progress has been made up to a certain point, the intellect always becomes conscious of the same want. It reaches out towards the comprehension of those larger principles which are evidently controlling the life-process as a whole which is at work beneath the outward face of our civilisation.

If we take up, for instance, in the present day, in England that series of State charters, of economic monographs, and of original public and other documents from which the historian of the social or of