Principles of western civilisation

18 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

a condition of avowed materialism in life and thought.

Now when the mind is carried back over the history of the past, it may be perceived that there is a noteworthy fact to which the movement which has hitherto represented the cause of progress throughout the English-speaking world has been primarily related. That movement, as it began its course both in England and America, rested ultimately on a broad basis, which was the same in both countries, namely, the existence of a deep moral enthusiasm for certain principles which had in the last resort a very definite meaning for their adherents. They were the principles to which it was firmly believed the inner and higher meaning of our civilisation was vitally related. They were principles which were held, accordingly, to make one characteristic demand upon their adherents. All interests, local, personal, and institutional—including those of the State itself as conceived within the furthest limits of political consciousness—were held ultimately to go down before the claim which they made on the minds of men. The movement towards individualism, towards personal responsibility, towards the enfranchisement of the individual in all his rights, powers, capacities, and opportunities, was closely related to this fundamental principle with which modern Liberalism set out in England and America alike. It has been, beyond doubt, the consciousness, never expressed in formulas, but always present in the background, of the relationship of the individual to larger claims on him than any included within the purposes of the State, which has dominated the strenuous inner life of that process of political enfranchisement with