118 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



The great secret of the coming age of the world is that 

 civilization rests not on Reason but on Emotion. 



One of the most remarkable results of the con- 

 centration of the Western mind for ages on the 

 phenomenon of the emergence of the individual 

 efficient in his own interests just referred to is our 

 position in relation to emotion. We know of 

 emotion mainly only as related to the science of this 

 efficient animal. In civilization we are constantly 

 under the necessity of controlling this kind of 

 emotion in the daily conflict of life. But it has 

 followed as one of the consequences resulting from 

 this that a considerable part, even of the educated 

 world, has acquired the habit of conceiving a 

 restricted capacity for emotion to be a feature of 

 advancing civilization. The mistake arises from a 

 fundamental confusion of ideas. It is the control 

 of emotion, not the absence of it, which is the mark 

 of high civilization. Other things being equal, the 

 higher and more complete the individual or the people, 

 the higher and more complete the capacity for emotion. 



In civilization as it exists around us at present 

 there is visible on every hand the influence of this 

 element of psychic emotion transmitted in the 

 collective inheritance. We get phases of it in the 

 deep effects of national training and national ethics 

 on different peoples, directed in the past almost 



