14 INTRODUCTION. 



22. at. What will interest us most will be the conscious 



Where the 



interest of a j ms an( j en( J s if suc h existed, of any political or social 



the book * 



taaiuhe movement, and, where they did not exist, at least the 

 wMchhave results to our inner life which have necessarily followed, 

 our inne? n the methods by which knowledge was extended or science 



life. 



applied, the principles which underlay literary composition 

 and criticism, and the hidden spiritual treasure which 

 poetry, art, and religious movements aimed at revealing 

 or communicating ; in fact the question : What part has 

 the inner world of Thought played in the history of our 

 century, what development, what progress, what gain 

 has been the result of the external events and changes ? 



23. But if personal knowledge and experience are as it 



The personal 



knowledge seems to me or the greatest importance in an attempt 



and experi- 



enceneces- iik e this i if, without having lived the inner life, a record 



sary for a 



trayaTforms ^ ^ would be either a mere string of names or a criticism 

 o/the^x- 011 of opinions, not a living picture, so it is also the factor 

 ground to be which necessarily limits the extent of the ground which 



traversed. 



I propose to traverse. Thus I feel obliged in the first 

 place to limit myself to European Thought. Such a limi- 

 tation would hardly have been called for a century ago, 

 because it would have been a matter of course : but the 

 steady growth and peculiar civilisation of a new and 



24. vigorous people on the other side of the Atlantic force 

 influence from me the twofold confession, that there is a large 



only 



touched world of growing importance of which I have no personal 

 knowledge, and to estimate which I therefore feel un- 

 qualified and unprepared ; and further, that I am equally 

 unable to picture to myself the aspect which the whole of 

 our European culture in its present state may assume to 

 an outside and far-removed observer who is placed in the 



