Principles of western civilisation

7o WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

“State” in this first sense. The science of social progress must, in short, be the science of the principles by which this subordination is effected. The history of such a type of social order must be, over and above everything else, the history of the phenomena accompanying this process of subordination. Nevertheless, when we proceed to scrutinise the theory of democracy as it has been presented in the intellectual movement which extends from conceptions of the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, down to the current formulas of social democracy in Germany, the nature of the remarkable spectacle we have in view in Western history cannot be mistaken. The fundamental idea involved in the theory may, we see, be nearly always expressed in a single sentence. It is the theory of the ‘‘State” efficiently organised towards the interests of its members, which includes the whole conception of the science and philosophy of society. The keynote to the prevailing theory of social progress is that the interest of the State and the interest of society tend to become one and the same ; that the ruling factor in history is therefore the economic factor; and that the tendency of all modern social progress is, therefore, to render, as it were, the spheres of the moralist and of the legislator identical.

If there is any one who feels at first sight inclined to think that this may be an over-statement, he has only to look back over the history of the phase of thought which has sought to identify itself with the democratic movement in the modern period in Western history, to speedily convince himself to the contrary.