Under such conditions, with new wealth come luxury
and love of ease and that fatal readiness to believe that God has placed
us in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers men's aims and
unstrings their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and
the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for
pleasure." "The political spirit has grown to be the strongest element
in our national life; the dominant force, extending its influence over
all our ways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics,
or even nothing at all to do with them. There has thus been engendered
among us the real sense of political responsibility. In a corresponding
degree has been discouraged ... the sense of intellectual
responsibility.... Practically, and as a matter of history, a society is
seldom at the same time successfully energetic both in temporals and
spirituals; seldom prosperous alike in seeking abstract truth and
nursing the political spirit."
The result of the new phase of English life was, on the one hand,
industrialism with its material values, and on the other hand the
beginnings of a Socialism equally pagan.
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