Principles of western civilisation

I THE CLOSE OF AN ERA 17

foreground. It was, therefore, towards the ideal ot finality in political institutions, and of a fixed social order in which all problems would be solved and the conciliation of all interests effected, that its purposes moved.* But all this, it is perceived, has been changed. An absolutely new world of ideas has been born beneath it. In the words of the writer in question :—The radical notion of political finality has been doomed. Since radicalism was first preached as a creed in England, all political as well as all scientific thinking has been vitally affected by the conception of evolution.” *

As we regard the situation developing itself under our eyes we may distinguish how deep beneath the surface of events the principles to which its meaning is related in reality extend. They are principles which cannot be expressed in any theory of temporary or local causes. ‘‘ There is no more patent and significant fact in contemporary Europe,” says the same writer elsewhere, “than the failure, if not the absolute collapse, of parliamentary government. In France and Italy the Chamber of Deputies is half-dreaded, half-despised. In Austria, fortunately, the eichsrath does not govern.”* In England, the accompaniment of the conditions already described has been “a visible decline in the esteem in which Parliament is held, and of the genuine authority which it possesses. * In Germany the Liberalism of the middle decades of the nineteenth century has ended in disillusionment, tending, amongst the parties that have succeeded those which professed it, towards