Principles of western civilisation

m ZHE POSITION IN MODERN THOUGHT 73

takes his way through this work at the present day its main idea and purpose are clearly to be distinguished by him. The conceptions of the book represent, in reality, as Mr. Leslie Stephen has recently pointed out,’ only the spirit of business, and the revolt of men who were at the time building up a vast industrial system against the fetters hitherto imposed on them by traditional legislation. We have before us, as it were, the characteristic protest of the interests in the present against the rule of the past. Yet we see the principles of the purely business State, as therein set forth, beginning, from this point forward, to be received in England by a school of writers of altogether exceptional prestige and authority, as if they constituted the whole science of society. Under the influence of Bentham, Austin, James Mill, Malthus, Ricardo, Grote, and John Stuart Mill, we see Adam Smith’s ideas being gradually expanded into a complete and self-contained system of social philosophy, more and more closely identifying itself with the theory of modern democracy. Through every part of this system there runs, we see, the influence of a single dominant conception, namely, that the “State” and “‘ Society” are one and the same, and, therefore, that the science of the State is the science of human evolution.

Any inquirer who wishes to follow for himself the history of this remarkable development in Western history finds all its stages clearly marked before him in the literature of English thought during the nineteenth century. As we take down the volumes of Bentham, whose influence in Eng-

1 The English Utilitarians, vol. i. p. 307.