table with the
happenings of the entire world. Thanks to the new mechanisms, national
isolation is no longer possible; globe-trotting has become a habit with
thousands of individuals of many nations; and Orient and Occident,
representing civilizations that for thousands of years were almost
absolutely severed and mutually oblivious of each other, have been
brought again into close touch for mutual education and betterment. The
Western mind has learned with amazement that the aforetime _Terra
Incognita_ of the far East has nurtured a gigantic civilization having
ideals in many ways far different from our own. The Eastern mind has
proved itself capable, in self-defence, of absorbing the essential
practicalities of Western civilization within a single generation. Some
of the most important problems of world-civilization of the immediate
future hinge upon the mutual relations of these two long-severed
communities, branched at some early stage of progress to opposite
hemispheres of the globe, but now brought by the new mechanisms into
daily and even hourly communication.

Modern humanism.

While the new conditions of the industrial world have thus tended to
develop a new national outlook, there has come about, as a result of the
scientific discoveries already referred to, a no less significant
broadening of the mental and spiritual horizons. Here also the trend is
away from the narrowly egoistic and towards the cosmopolitan view. About
the middle of the 19th century Dr Pritchard declared that many people
debated whether it might not be permissible for the Australian settlers
to shoot the natives as food for their dogs; some of the disputants
arguing that savages were without the pale of human brotherhood. To-day
the thesis that all mankind are one brotherhood needs no defence. The
most primitive of existing aborigines are regarded merely as brethren
who, through some defect or neglect of opportunity, have lagged behind
in the race. Similarly the defective and criminal classes that make up
so significant a part of the population of even our highest present-day
civilizations, are no longer regarded with anger or contempt, as beings
who are suffering just punishment for wilful transgressions, but are
considered as pitiful victims of hereditary and environmental influences
that they could neither choose nor control. Insanity is no longer
thought of as demoniac possession, but as the most lamentable of
diseases.

The chan