The fresh thought
about the physical constitution of man bears its fruit ultimately in
some fresh notion of his spiritual constitution; the new fact in
geology does not spend its force until it has wrought a modification
of the view of the creative method and the age of man in the world;
the fresh conception of the method of evolution along material and
physical lines slowly reconstructs the philosophy of mental and
spiritual development. Every new thought relates itself finally to all
thought, and is like the forward step which continually changes the
horizon about the traveller.
The history of man is the story of the ideas he has entertained and
accepted, and of his struggle to incorporate these ideas into laws,
customs, institutions, and character. At the heart of every race one
finds certain ideas, not always clearly seen nor often definitely
formulated save by a few persons, but unconsciously held with
deathless tenacity and illustrated by a vast range of action and
achievement; at the heart of every great civilisation one finds a few
dominant and vital conceptions which give a certain coherence and
unity to a vast movement of life.
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