230 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP.XI 



and when its indirect and subtle effects are compounded 

 with the obvious and immediate will be found to go a long 

 way in explaining the causes of arrest and decay. 



That modern civilisation may share the fate of earlier 

 periods of culture is, of course, possible. The reasons for 

 hoping for a better event have been implied in discussing 

 the potentialities of that which we take to be the highest 

 stage of mental development. Modern civilisation stands 

 above that of Greece or Rome not because it has realised 

 greater happiness for the world or a more beautiful order of 

 life or greater works of genius. These things none can 

 measure. Happiness is naught until it is complete, and 

 only full development of Mind could render it secure. If 

 the world process were to be arrested here, it might 

 plausibly be contended that in the actual fruition the life of 

 Athens was something finer and more worth having than 

 the life of England or France. The modern world stands 

 higher because it is further on the road to the goal, though 

 it may be that its portion of the road lies through less 

 smiling country, and it is further on the road because its 

 Thought has advanced a clear stage in the control of the 

 conditions of life and in the conception of its own aim and 

 end. For the same reason it is gradually subduing both 

 the barbarian without the gate and the Philistine within. 



