The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Unity of Civilization, by Various, Edited
by F. S. Marvin

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Title: The Unity of Civilization

Author: Various

Release Date: February 12, 2005 [eBook #15030]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE UNITY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Essays Arranged and Edited by

F. S. MARVIN

Sometime Senior Scholar of St. John's College, Oxford
Author of _The Living Past_

Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow New York
Toronto Melbourne Bombay

1915

PREFACE

The following essays are the substance of a course of lectures delivered
at a Summer School at the Woodbrooke Settlement, near Birmingham, in
August 1915. The general purpose of the course will be apparent from the
essays themselves. No forced or mechanical uniformity of view was aimed
at. The writers will be found, very naturally and properly, to differ in
detail and in the stress they lay on different aspects of the case. But
they agree in thinking that while our country's cause and the cause of
our Allies is just and necessary and must be prosecuted with the utmost
vigour, it is not inopportune to reflect on those common and
ineradicable elements in the civilization of the West which tend to form
a real commonwealth of nations and will survive even the most shattering
of conflicts. That we on the Allied side stand fundamentally for this
ideal is one of our most valuable assets.

The fact that the lectures were delivered at a settlement for training
persons for social work in a religious spirit, suggested to more than
one of those who took part in the course, how similar is the task which
now lies before us in international affairs to that which Canon Barnett
initiated thirty years ago for the treatment of the social question at
home. We need in both cases to associate ourselves mentally with others
in order to realize the common elements which underlie the seeming
diversity in the civilization of the West.

The