ivals, atrophying and disappearing.
Behind and despite of them there is a common Western mind and a common
Western organisation. Finance is cosmopolitan; industry is cosmopolitan;
trade is cosmopolitan. There is one scientific method, and the results
achieved by it are common. There is one system of industry, that known
as Capitalism; and the problems arising from it and the solutions
propounded appear alike in every nation. There is one political
tendency, or fact, that of popular government. There are cognate aims
and similar achievements in literature and art. There is, in brief, a
Western movement, a Western problem, a Western mentality; and the
particular happenings of particular nations are all parts of this one
happening. Nor is this all. There is in the West a common religion. I do
not refer to Christianity, for the religion I mean is held by hundreds
and thousands who are not Christians, and indeed does not very readily
find in Christianity an expression at once coherent and pure. It has not
been formulated in a creed; but it is to be felt and heard in all the
serious work and all the serious thought of the West. It is the religion
of Good and Evil, of Time and the process in Time. If it tried to draw
up a confession of faith perhaps it would produce, as its first attempt,
something of this kind:--

"I believe in the ultimate distinction between Good and Evil,
and in a real process in a real Time. I believe it to be my duty
to increase Good and diminish Evil; I believe that in doing this
I am serving the purpose of the world. I know this; I do not
know anything else; and I am reluctant to put questions to which
I have no answer, and to which I do not believe that anyone has
an answer. Action, as defined above, is my creed. Speculation
weakens action. I do not wish to speculate, I wish to live. And
I believe the true life to be the life I have described."

In saying that this is the real creed of the modern Western man I do not
pretend that he always knows or would admit it to be so. But if his
actions, his words, and his thoughts be sympathetically interpreted,
where all are at their best, I think they will be found to imply
something of this kind. And this attitude I call religious, not merely
ethical, because of its conviction that the impulse towards Good is of
the essence of the World, not only of men, or of Man. To believe this is
an act of faith, not of reason; though