14 INTRODUCTION. 



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



Where the . . 



interest of aims and ends, if such existed, 01 any political or social 



the book 



hi'ainiie movement, and, where they did not exist, at least the 



whichhave results to our inner life which have necessarily followed, 



our inner" the methods by which knowledge was extended or science 



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 of the greatest importance in an attempt 



and experi- 



this ; if, without having lived the inner life, a record 



traya?forms ^ & would be either a mere string of names or a criticism 

 of the ex- 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 



American 



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



only 



up U on hed 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 



