52 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



local and therefore of false gods. He was the anti- 

 thesis of the universal. The modern definition of 

 paganism may be put clearly and briefly thus : 



The pagan man is the man whose standard of 



Right does not extend beyond his own 



interests. 

 The pagan state is the state whose standard 



of Right does not extend beyond its own 



interests. 



The pagan man and the pagan state may confuse 

 us at the present day by the profession of exemplary 

 principles or of exemplary standards of culture 

 from motives of expediency or opportunism in the 

 midst of the world by which they are surrounded. 

 But if they have as part of them no standard ot 

 Right raised to the plane of the Universal and pro- 

 jected outside their interests, they are essentially 

 pagan. And systems of religion, systems of ethics 

 and philosophies are all in whole or in part pagan or 

 the reverse in this sense, as well as men and states. 

 Now in the light of these facts it is a matter 

 of peculiar interest to attempt to follow the vast 

 effort in the life of the modern West to clothe the 

 ideas of the great pagan retrogression resting on 

 Darwinism in the language of science and philo- 

 sophy, and then to embody them in gigantic schemes 

 of world politics. They all conform to one type. 



