history of the clearly defined movement in modern thought, in which the endeavour has been more and more authoritatively made to interpret to us the phenomenon of our Western democracy, he sees that it is justifiable to make in respect of it a deeply significant assertion. It is that this movement — in all the phases in which it has contemplated the ascendency of the interests of the present in the evolutionary process, and in which, therefore, we see it identifying the interests of society with the interests of the individuals comprised within the limits of political consciousness has not carried the theory of society, in any scientific principle, a step beyond the position which it occupied twenty-three centuries ago in Greek thought. It is the theory of the State alone which we again encounter in all the developments of the time. In modern thought, as we see it represented in this movement, the interest of the State has become again, just as in the Greek civilisation, the ultimate principle in the science of society, the controlling end in the theory of human conduct. The State itself has become, to use the words of Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, an "être mystérieux dont tant de prétendus sages prononcent le nom avec adoration, que tous les hommes invoquent, que tous se disputent, et qui semble être le seul dieu auquel le monde moderne veuille garder respect et confiance."1 We have returned, as it were, to the standpoint of the ancient world, when the ascendency of the interests of the present, expressing themselves through the State, becomes once more the ultimate fact to which every principle of society and of human life is made subservient.

1 L'État moderne et ses fonctions, par Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, p. 25,

As the mind, with such a conclusion in view, reverts to the meaning of that characteristic principle of the subordination of the present to the future which we saw to have governed the evolution of life from the beginning; as we begin to perceive the application to the science of society of that great conception, which German idealism struggled for 150 years to bring to the birth in coherent utterance, namely, that the history of the world is the history of the ideas by which the subordination of the individual to a world-process infinite in its meaning has been effected; the character of the position in modern thought begins to impress the imagination. For, as we catch sight of what must be the real meaning of the great process of life which has developed towards our Western democracy; as we perceive the significance of the fact that that process of life has come to occupy the place it fills on the stage of the world only in virtue of some deep-seated and inherent principle of fitness in the stress out of which it has come; as we begin to realise something of the nature of the organic, subordinating, and integrating principles which must be resident in it, — principles involving the subordination of the individual and all his interests, and even those of whole movements and epochs of time to the ends of a process of life moving forward through the slow cosmic stress of the centuries; nay, as we see how it is those same principles, which must continue to control our developing civilisation, should it be destined to continue to hold its place in the stress of the world in the future; there rises at last in the mind an over

mastering conviction of the extraordinary incompleteness and insufficiency of all the conceptions of the science of society we have been here considering. The nature of the main position in thought, which underlies that attitude of doubt, of hesitation, and even of revolt, which the younger and rising minds in so many schools of thought present to the social philosophy of the past, begins to be revealed to us. It is no question, we see, merely of faults, local or personal, in the systems of thought around us. We are regarding no merely passing phase of temporary interest, but a position in thought which separates two epochs in the intellectual development of the world.

For, as for a vast period of time the old philosophers constructed their systems of Ptolemaic cosmogony to centre in the observer and revolve round the little world upon which he stood; so, down into the midst of the time in which we are living, we see the systems of social theory we have been considering similarly constructed to centre in the observer, similarly conceived to revolve round the petty interests which the same individual saw comprised within the limits of his own political consciousness. We have reached a crisis in thought where, to use words of Mr. Leslie Stephen, the scenery has at last become too wide for the drama, where, through the roof of the theatre in which our theorists have unfolded these little conceptions of human progress, we see the eternal stars shining in silent contempt of such petty imaginings.1

1 History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 82.

CHAPTER IV

THE PHENOMENON OF WESTERN LIBERALISM

When

WHEN We have become conscious, however imperfectly, of the nature of the position defined in the last chapter, the interest of the situation will, in all probability, be felt to deepen as soon as the attempt is made to carry the analysis a stage further. it is once realised that the development in Western history which has slowly carried our civilisation towards the forms of Democracy cannot, of necessity, be expressed in any mere theory of the State, or in any of those current formulas in which the interests of the individuals, comprised within the limits of political consciousness, are conceived as the dominant factor in human evolution; the mind turns instinctively to scrutinise the phenomenon of Western Liberalism as a whole. How is it that the meaning of the progressive movement which it represents has come to be interpreted to us in the terms in which we have thus found it to be set forth in current thought?

Nothing can be more remarkable than the position to which modern Liberalism has been actually reduced in practice by the endeavour to present it as a movement resting under all its forms on a theory of existing interests in the State. The paralysing contradictions resulting from the attempt are a char

acteristic feature of the time. The most striking

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spectacle in modern history, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, is the position arising, not only in internal politics, but in international relations, from the endeavour to represent the meaning of the world-process, in the midst of which we are living, by a business theory of the State. Following the analysis in the preceding chapters we have only to read between the lines of Professor Ritchie's examination 1 of the formulas of "Natural Rights," which modern thought has essayed to put into the mouth of Demos, from the French Revolution onwards, to realise in what irretrievable ruin the theories which have accompanied that attempt lie around us at the present time.

In what, then, consists the ultimate claim of Western Liberalism as a principle of progress? It cannot represent simply the claim of the interests in the present to be the dominant factor in the evolutionary process, as we have seen that claim expressed in the conceptions of utilitarianism, and in the theories alike. of Nietzsche and of Marx. Nor can it be the claim of individualism. For how could the individual be greater than society? Nor can it be the claim of the majority to rule. For to attempt to reduce the individuals, comprised even within our own civilisation at the present day, to the rule of the majority, would be to attempt to put the world's progress back a thousand years. Nay, it would be undoubtedly to provoke from the advanced peoples, and even from many of the advocates of universal peace amongst them, a resistance as determined, as unhesitating, and

1 Natural Rights, by David G. Ritchie.