Principles of western civilisation

vii ZLHE GREAT ANTINOMY: FIRST STAGE 255

already be distinguished even beneath the clauses of Magna Charta, that the intellect goes out. It is the meaning of that central problem in the unfolding of the human mind now beginning to define itself in Western history that holds the attentionthat problem of which we catch sight in the history of England in the ordinance of William I. dividing the secular from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction ;? in the struggle between the king of England and Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury; in the causes which produced the Constitutions of Clarendon; in the drama being enacted as a king of England receives his kingdom as a fief from the See of Rome; in the long conflict over investiture; in the statute of mortmain;? and in the Bull of Clericis Laicos.* It is the unfolding of the problem in human development represented in the process of life from which these events begin to proceed that is about to control the course of history in England, as in Western Europe, during the centuries which are to come.

When we turn to follow this system of life to its centre on the continent of Europe in the Middle Ages, it may be observed that the character of the problem underlying the development of the Western world has already progressed towards definition. The new system of belief that we saw in the last chapter undermining the foundations upon which the ancient State had rested, and which, through its action in projecting the controlling principles of human consciousness out of the present, we saw

1 Stubbs’ Select Charters, p. 85, and Henderson’s Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, p. 9.

2 Select Charters, vii. y.; Select Documents, i. viii.

3 Select Documents, iv. yi.