Principles of western civilisation

CHAPTER II

THE SHIFTING OF THE CENTRE OF SIGNIFICANCE IN THE EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESIS—THE PRINCIPLE OF PROJECTED EFFICIENCY.

To obtain some definite view of the nature of the remarkable position towards which the theory of our Western progress has been carried by recent developments in the evolutionary hypothesis, it is in the highest degree desirable that the observer should, in the first instance, endeavour, as far as possible, to detach his point of view from those more current and transient phases of social controversy which largly occupy the attention of the world.

The first step towards realising the condition of mind in which it is desirable to approach the consideration of the problem of modern progress through the medium of the biological sciences, is that which every really scientific observer who has followed the trend of recent thought will in all probability have taken for himself. There is possibly no one at the present time, who has made progress towards understanding something of the governing principles of our social development, that has not arrived at a point where he has felt the necessity for definitely and finally putting away from him a conception which pervaded almost all

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