GREAT PAGAN RETROGRESSION 48 



minds oi civilization were allowing themselves to 

 think with the rulers of Great Britain under the 

 lead of the Prince Consort, that the opening of the 

 Great International Exhibition of 1851 in London 

 marked the practical inauguration of such an era 

 of universal peace. 



A change radical and sudden took place soon 

 after 1850 in the spirit of the West. It was a 

 change which did not arise from any causes merely 

 social or political. It was due to forces which were 

 profoundly jpsychic. It is necessary to under- 

 stand these forces, for it is in the psychic develop- 

 ment which preceded the world war of 1914, that 

 we have to witness the almost incredible spectacle 

 of the entire organized system of that knowledge 

 of the West, which is essentially the science of 

 force, passing gradually to monstrous forms of 

 extravagance and failure, and at length to irre- 

 trievable bankruptcy in Western civilization. 



By far the most important event in the history 

 of the modern West is that of the publication in 

 1859 of Darwin's Origin of Species. There is no 

 precedent in the history of the human mind to 

 compare with the saturnalia of the Western 

 intellect which followed the publication of this 

 book. Speaking of the event in his Presiden- 

 tial Address to the Royal Society in London in 



