Principles of western civilisation

26 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

under the control of aggregations of capital effectively organised for conflict, while the outstanding rivals gravitate towards the phenomenonof monopolycontrol on a gigantic scale; the growth of wealth and power in such organisations until they have become rivals in some respects of the State itself; the exercise of such unusual and immense powers, with no sense of responsibility other than that of the self-interest of capital in pursuit of gain; the earning of profits which, when all allowance is made for benefits rendered in the organisation of industry, tend more and more to correspond to conditions of monopoly and less and less to equivalent in terms of social service; with, incidentally, the accumulation in individual hands of private fortunes tending to equal in capital amount the annual revenue of first-class States :—are all features of a state of society in which, under the characteristic economic activities of the modern world, we see the ruling conditions of the ancient civilisations again being reproduced. They are all expressions of a single fact, namely, that ascendency of the present in the economic process, which is the correlative of the position in thought already described ; but which, nevertheless, cannot be, as would appear, the condition towards which human society is developing.

As such a phase of social development moves slowly in our time toward its highest expression on the world-stage, it is the lurid and gigantic details of the same principle that continue to hold the mind. As in the international exploitation of the resources of the world all nations have tended to come at last into a common market to compete for a diminishing margin of profit ; as,