Principles of western civilisation

24 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

the position in thought that has just been described. In the future history of social development it is with the era of the ascendency of the present in the economic activities of the world that the distinctive meaning of the Manchester school is destined to be identified. It is as if the conditions of the irresponsible struggle to the death between men in the ancient civilisations had been changed from a military to an economic basis, while as yet every one of its other ruling principles had remained unaltered.?

As in this light we look at the applied results of this conception of society as they have been developed in our civilisation down into the period in which we are living, the relationship to each other of the leading phases of the economic process may be distinguished.

In the long characteristic struggle maintained throughout our civilisation in the modern period by labour against the terms of capital, all the details are, we begin to see, related to the fact which is here emphasised. Whatever the accompaniments of this struggle, or whatever the passing rights or wrongs on either side, it is now beginning to be

1 In an interesting analysis, Dr. Cunningham brings out the fact that, despite the larger humanitarian and cosmopolitan conceptions often associated with the application of the modern theories of trade, there was really nothing cosmopolitan in the views with which the Manchester school set out in England. In their principles they ‘‘set wealth in the foreground and ignored national power as an independent aim.” But both in internal and external relations the ruling principle was related to the pursuit of wealth. For, ‘‘it was reasonable to maintain that each individual knew his own interest best, that, in pursuing his own interest, he accumulated most wealth for himself, and that, in so far as each individual acted in this fashion, the aggregate wealth of all individuals and the total wealth of the nation would increase” (The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, by W. Cunnuingham, pp. 584-85).