annot claim that
it harmonises with this controlling idea.

In the Middle Ages Europeans followed a different guiding star. The idea
of a life beyond the grave was in control, and the great things of
this life were conducted with reference to the next. When men's deepest
feelings reacted more steadily and powerfully to the idea of saving
their souls than to any other, harmony with this idea was the test by
which the opportuneness of social theories and institutions was judged.
Monasticism, for instance, throve under its aegis, while liberty of
conscience had no chance. With a new idea in control, this has been
reversed. Religious freedom has thriven under the aegis of Progress;
monasticism can make no appeal to it.

For the hope of an ultimate happy state on this planet to be enjoyed by
future generations--or of some state, at least, that may relatively be
considered happy--has replaced, as a social power, the hope of felicity
in another world. Belief in personal immortality is still very widely
entertained, but may we not fairly say that it has ceased to be a
central and guiding idea of collective life, a criterion by which social
values are measured? Many people do not believe in it; many more regard
it as so uncertain that they could not reasonably permit it to affect
their lives or opinions. Those who believe in it are doubtless the
majority, but belief has many degrees; and one can hardly be wrong
in saying that, as a general rule, this belief does not possess the
imaginations of those who hold it, that their emotions react to it
feebly, that it is felt to be remote and unreal, and has comparatively
seldom a more direct influence on conduct than the abstract arguments to
be found in treatises on morals.

Under the control of the idea of Progress the ethical code recognised in
the Western world has been reformed in modern times by a new principle
of far-reaching importance which has emanated from that idea. When
Isocrates formulated the rule of life, "Do unto others," he probably did
not mean to include among "others" slaves or savages. The Stoics and the
Christians extended its application to the whole of living humanity. But
in late years the rule has received a vastly greater extension by the
inclusion of the unborn generations of the future. This principle of
duty to posterity is a direct corollary of the idea of Progress. In
the recent war that idea, involving the moral obligation of making
sacrifices for th