THE PAGAN ETHIC 69 



tion. The individual of the primitive ages of the 

 race, when A killed B before B was able to kill A, 

 and left his descendants, was the individual efficient 

 in his own interests. He was the individual of whom 

 Darwin gave us the science, of whom Nietzsche's 

 superman gave us the voice, of whom the empire 

 of pagan Rome gave us the culminating stage in 

 history, and of whom the war textbooks of modern 

 Germany gave us some of the maxims revived in 

 terms of the modern military State. But despite 

 these phases the epoch of this individual represents 

 an epoch which is passing out of account in human 

 history. This is the meaning of the modern West. 

 It is the psychic and spiritual forces governing 

 the social integration in which the individual is 

 being subordinated to the universal which have 

 become the winning forces in evolution. 



There is not, however, the slightest fore-glimpse 

 of the principles of this wider science of evolution 

 in Darwin. For instance, where in the Descent of 

 Man Darwin brings us for a moment into touch 

 with the psychic causes in civilization, he shows no 

 comprehension of the results as the phenomenology 

 of a larger principle of natural selection operating 

 on a higher plane in human society. The sub- 

 ordinating psychic causes which are upbuilding 

 civilization seem simply to bewilder Darwin. He 



