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domestic relations. It is as an aspect of this development that we must regard the importance of that progress towards economic freedom, which political economists are coming to look upon as characteristic of modern times.1 And it is as a necessary accompaniment of the same development that we must recognise the significance of that movement which, having at length almost completed the political enfranchisement of the masses, has in our own day, amid much misconception and misapprehension, already begun their social emancipation.

So far we have attempted to answer the question as to the significance in the eyes of the evolutionist of that developmental process in progress in our civilisation. To answer the question as to what is the nature of the evolutionary force which has been behind it, we must now return to the consideration of the unfolding of that organic process of development which has its seat in the ethical system upon which our civilisation is founded.

1 Vide Professor Marshall's Principles of Economics, vol. i. p. 8.

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CHAPTER VII

WESTERN CIVILISATION—(continued)

It is not improbable, after the sanguine expectations which have been entertained throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, as to the part which the intellect is destined to play in human evolution, that one of the most remarkable features of the age upon which we are entering will be the disillusionment we are likely to undergo in this respect. There has been for long abroad in the minds of men, an idea, which finds constant expression (although it is not perhaps always clearly and consistently held) that this vast development in the direction of individual, economic, political, and social enfranchisement which has been taking place in our civilisation, is essentially an intellectual movement. Nothing can be more obvious, however, as soon as we begin to understand the nature of the process of evolution in progress around us, than that the moving force behind it is not the intellect, and that the development as a whole is not in any true sense an intellectual movement. Nay more, we may distinguish, with some degree of clearness, the nature of the part taken therein by the intellect. It is an important part certainly, but it is also beyond doubt a subordinate one, strictly limited and circum

scribed. The intellect is employed in developing ground which has been won for it by other forces. But it would appear that it has by itself no power to occupy this ground; it has not even any power to continue to hold it after it has been won when these forces have spent and exhausted themselves.

We have seen that to obtain a just conception of our Western civilisation, it is necessary to regard it from the beginning as a single continuous growth, endowed with a definite principle of life, subject to law, and passing, like any other organism, through certain orderly stages of development. If we look back once more over that ethical movement which we have regarded as the seat of the vital phenomena we are witnessing, and which projects itself with such force and distinctness through the history of the European peoples, it may be perceived that it is divided into two clearlydefined stages. In the preceding chapter our attention was confined exclusively to the first of these stages. The second stage began with the Renaissance, or, more accurately speaking, with the Reformation, and it continues down into the period in which we are living.

It will be remembered that in the last chapter it was insisted that the dominant and determinative feature of the first period was the development of an ultra-rational sanction for the constitution of society; which sanction attained, in the European Theocracy of the fourteenth century, a strength and influence never before known. All the extraordinary series of phenomena peculiar to the centuries which have become known as "the ages of faith" are in this light to be regarded, it was maintained, as constituting the early and immature aspects of a movement endowed from the beginning with

enormous vital energy. The process, as a whole, was to reach fruition only at a later stage. In the second period, as the other factor in our evolution begins. slowly to operate, we see the revolutionary and transforming forces which from the outset constituted the characteristic element in the religious system upon which our civilisation is founded, but which during the period of growth were diverted into other channels, now finding their true social expression. We witness in this period the beginning, and follow through the centuries the progress, of a social revolution unequalled in magnitude and absolutely unique in character, a revolution the significance of which is perceived to lie, not, as is often supposed, in its tendency to bring about a condition. of society in which the laws of previous development are to be suspended; but in the fact that it constitutes the last orderly stage in the same cosmic process which has been in progress in the world from the beginning of life. Let us see if we can explain the nature of the force that has been behind this revolution, and the manner in which it has operated in producing that process of social development which the Western peoples are still undergoing.

If the mind is carried backwards and concentrated on the first period of the religious movement which began in the early centuries of our era, it will be noticed that there was one feature which stood out with great prominence. It is a matter beyond question that this movement involved from its inception the very highest conception of the Altruistic ideal to which the human mind has in any general sense ever attained. At this distance of time this characteristic is still unmistakable.

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Any impartial observer," says Mr. Lecky, "would describe the most distinctive virtue referred to in the

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New Testament as love, charity, or philanthropy." It is the spirit of charity, pity, and infinite compassion which breathes through the gospels. The new religion was, at the outset, actually and without any figurative exaggeration what the same writer has called it elsewhere, "a proclamation of the universal brotherhood of man." We note how it was this feature which impressed the minds of men at first. The noble system of ethics, the affection which the members bore to each other, the devotion of all to the corporate welfare, the spirit of infinite tolerance for every weakness and inequality, the consequent tendency to the dissolution of social and class barriers of every kind, beginning with those between slave and master, and the presence everywhere of the feeling of actual brotherhood, were the outward features of all the early Christian societies.

Now it seems at first sight a remarkable fact, even at the present day, that the adherents of a form of belief apparently so benevolent and exemplary should have been at an early stage in the history of the movement subjected to the persecutions which they had to endure. under the Roman Empire. It is not, in fact, surprising that many writers should have followed Gibbon, in search of a satisfactory explanation, into an elaborate analysis of the causes that led the Roman state, which elsewhere exercised so contemptuous a tolerance for the religions of the peoples whom it ruled, to have undertaken the rigorous measures which it from time to time. endeavoured to enforce against the adherents of the new movement. "If," says Gibbon, "we recollect the universal toleration of Polytheism, as it was invariably maintained by the faith of the people, the incredulity of the philosophers, and the policy of the Roman senate 1 History of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 130.

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