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As is true of any other point of view that may be characteristic of any other period of history, so also the modern point of view is a matter of habit. It is common to the modern civilised peoples only in so far as these peoples have come through substantially the same historical experience and have thereby acquired substantially the same habits of thought and have fallen into somewhat the same prevalent frame of mind. This modern point of view, therefore, is limited both in time and space. It is characteristic of the modern historical era and of such peoples as lie within the range of that peculiar civilisation which marks off the modern world from what has gone before and from what still prevails outside of its range. In other words, it is a trait of modern Christendom, of Occidental civilisation as it has run within the past few centuries. This general statement is not vitiated by the fact that there has been some slight diffusion of these modern and Western ideas outside of this range in recent times.

By historical accident it happens that the modern point of view has reached its maturest formulation and prevails with the least faltering among the French and English-speaking peoples; so that these peoples may be said to constitute the center of diffusion for that system of ideas which is called the modern point of view. Outward from this broad center the same range of ideas prevail throughout Christendom, but they prevail with less singleness of conviction among the peoples who are culturally more remote from this center; increasingly so with each farther remove. These others have carried over a larger remainder of the habits of thought of an earlier age, and have carried them over in a better state of preservation. It may also be that these others, or some of them, have acquired habits of thought of a new order which do not altogether fit into that system of ideas that is commonly spoken of as the modern point of view. That such is the case need imply neither praise nor blame. It is only that, by common usage, these remainders of ancient habits of thought and these newer preconceptions that do not fit into the framework of

West-European conventional thinking are not ordinarily rated as intrinsic to the modern point of view. They need not therefore be less to the purpose as a guide and criterion of human living; it is only that they are alien to those purposes which are considered to be of prime consequence in civilised life as it is guided and tested by the constituent principles of the modern point of view.

What is spoken of as a point of view is always a composite affair; some sort of a rounded and balanced system of principles and standards, which are taken for granted, at least provisionally, and which serve as a base of reference and legitimation in all questions of deliberate opinion. So when any given usage or any line of conduct or belief is seen and approved from the modern point of view, it comes to the same as saying that these things are seen and accepted in the light of those principles which modern men habitually consider to be final and sufficient. They are principles of right, equity, propriety, duty, perhaps of knowledge, belief, and taste.

It is evident that these principles and standards of what is right, good, true, and beautiful, will vary from one age to another and from one people to another, in response to the varying conditions of life; inasmuch as these principles are always of the nature of habit; although the variation will of course range only within the limits of that human nature that finds expression in these same principles of right, good, truth, and beauty. So also, it will be found that something in the way of a common measure of truth and sufficiency runs through any such body of principles that are accepted as final and self-evident at any given time and place, -- in case this habitual body of principles has reached such a degree of poise and consistency that they can fairly be said to constitute a stable point of view. It is only because there is such a degree of consistency and such a common measure of validity among the commonly accepted principles of conduct and belief today, that it is possible to speak intelligently of the modern point of view, and to contrast it with any other point of view which may have prevailed earlier or elsewhere, as, e.g., in the Middle Ages or in Pagan Antiquity.

The Romans were given to saying. Tempora mutantur, and the Spanish have learned to speak indulgently in the name of Costumbres del pais. The common law of the English-speaking peoples does not coincide at all points with what was indefeasibly right and good in the eyes of the Romans; and still less do its principles countenance all the vagaries of the Mosaic code. Yet, each and several, in their due time and institutional setting, these have all been tried and found valid and have approved themselves as securely and eternally right and good in principle.

Evidently these principles, which so are made to serve as standards of validity in law and custom, knowledge and belief, are of the nature of canons, established rules, and have the authority of precedent, prescription. They have been defined by the attrition of use and wont and disputation, and they are accepted in a somewhat deliberate manner by common consent, and are upheld by a deliberate public opinion as to what is right and seemly. In the popular apprehension, and indeed in the apprehension of the trained jurists and scholars for the time being, these constituent principles of the accepted point of view are "fundamentally and eternally right and good." But this perpetuity with which they so are habitually invested in the popular apprehension, in their time, is evidently such a qualified perpetuity only as belongs to any settled outgrowth of use and wont. They are of an institutional character and they are endowed with that degree of perpetuity only that belongs to any institution. So soon as a marked change of circumstances comes on, -- a change of a sufficiently profound, enduring and comprehensive character, such as persistently to cross or to go beyond those lines of use and wont out of which these settled principles have emerged, -- then these principles and their standards of validity and finality must presently undergo a revision, such as to bring on a new balance of principles, embodying the habits of thought enforced by a new situation, and expressing itself in a revised scheme of authoritative use and wont, law and custom. In the transition from the medieval to the modern point of view, e. g., there is to be seen such a pervasive change in men's habitual outlook, answering to the compulsion of a new range of circumstances which then came to condition the daily life of the peoples of Christendom. In this mutation of the habitual outlook, between medieval and modern times, the contrast is perhaps most neatly shown in the altered standards of knowledge and belief, rather than in the settled domain of law and morals. Not that the mutation of habits which then overtook the Western world need have been less wide or less effectual in matters of conduct; but the change which has taken effect in science and philosophy, between the fourteenth century and the nineteenth, e. g., appears to have been of a more recognizable character, more easily defined in succinct and convincing terms.

It has also quite generally attracted the attention of those men who have interested themselves in the course of historical events, and it has therefore become something of a commonplace in any standard historical survey of modern civilisation to say that the scheme of knowledge and belief underwent a visible change between the Middle Ages and modern times.

It will also be found true that the canons of knowledge and belief, the principles governing what is fact and what is credible, are more intimately and intrinsically involved in the habitual behavior of the human spirit than any factors of human habit in other bearings. Such is necessarily the case, because the principles which guide and limit knowledge and belief are the ways and means by which men take stock of what is to be done and by which they take thought of how it is to be done. It is by the use of their habitual canons of knowledge and belief, that men construct those canons of conduct which serve as guide and standards in practical life. Men do not pass appraisal on matters which lie beyond the reach of their knowledge and belief, nor do they formulate rules to govern the game of life beyond that limit.

So, congenitally blind persons do not build color schemes; nor will a man without an "ear for music" become a master of musical composition. So also, "the medieval mind" took no thought and made no provision for those later-arisen exigencies of life and those later-known facts of material science which lay yet beyond the bounds of its medieval knowledge and belief; but this "medieval mind" at the same time spent much thought and took many excellent precautions about things which have now come to be accounted altogether fanciful, -- things which the maturer insight, or perhaps the less fertile conceit, of a more experienced age has disowned as being palpably not in accord with fact.

That is to say, things which once were convincingly substantial and demonstrable, according to the best knowledge and belief of the medieval mind, can now no longer be discerned as facts, according to those canons of knowledge and belief that are now doing duty among modern men as conclusive standards of reality. Not that all persons who are born within modern times are thereby rendered unable to know and to believe in such medieval facts, e. g., as horoscopes, or witchcraft, or gentle birth, or the efficacy of prayer, or the divine right of kings; but, taken by and large, and in so far as it falls under the control of the modern point of view, the deliberate consensus of knowledge and belief now runs to the effect that these and other imponderables like them no longer belong among ascertained or ascertainable facts; but that they are on the other hand wholly illusory conceits, traceable to a mistaken point of view prevalent in that earlier and cruder age.

The principles governing knowledge and belief at any given time are primary and pervasive, beyond any others, in that they underlie all human deliberation and comprise the necessary elements of all human logic. But it is also to be noted that these canons of knowledge and belief are more immediately exposed to revision and correction by experience than the principles of law and morals. So soon as the conditions of life shift and change in any appreciable degree, experience will enforce a revision of the habitual standards of actuality and credibility, because of the habitual and increasingly obvious failure of what has before habitually been regarded as an ascertained fact.

Things which, under the ancient canons of knowledge, have habitually been regarded as known facts, -- as, e. g., witchcraft or the action of bodies at a distance, -- will under altered circumstances prove themselves by experience to have only a supposititious reality.

Any knowledge that runs in such out-worn terms turns out to be futile, misleading, meaningless; and the habit of imputing qualities and behavior of this kind to everyday facts will then fall into disuse, progressively as experience continues to bring home the futility of all that kind of imputation. And presently the habit of perceiving that class of qualities and behavior in the known facts is therefore gradually lost. So also, in due time the observances and the precautions and provisions embodied in law and custom for the preservation or the control of these lost imponderables will also fall into disuse and disappear out of the scheme of institutions, by way of becoming dead letter or by abrogation. Particularly will such a loss of belief and insight, and the consequent loss of those imponderables whose ground has thereby gone out from under them, take effect with the passing of generations.

An Imponderable is an article of make-believe which has become axiomatic by force of settled habit. It can accordingly cease to be an Imponderable by a course of unsettling habit.

Those elders in whom the ancient habits of faith and insight have been ingrained, and in whose knowledge and belief the imponderables in question have therefore had a vital reality, will presently fall away; and the new generation whose experience has run on other lines are in a fair way to lose these articles of faith and in. sight, by disuse. It is a case of obsolescence by habitual disuse. And the habitual disuse which so allows the ancient canons of knowledge and belief to fall away, and which thereby cuts the ground from under the traditional system of law and custom, is re-enforced by the advancing discipline of a new order of experience, which exacts an habitual apprehension of workday facts in terms of a different kind and thereby brings on a revaluation and revision of the traditional rules governing human relations. The new terms of workday knowledge and belief, which do not conform to the ancient canons, go to enforce and stabilise new canons and standards, of a character alien to the traditional point of view. It is, in other words, a case of obsolescence by displacement as well as by habitual disuse.

This unsettling discipline that is brought to bear by workday experience is chiefly and most immediately the discipline exercised by the material conditions of life, the exigencies that beset men in their everyday dealings with the material means of life; inasmuch as these material facts are insistent and uncompromising. And the scope and method of knowledge and belief which is forced on men in their everyday material concerns will unavoidably, by habitual use, extend to other matters as well; so as also to affect the scope and method of knowledge and belief in all that concerns those imponderable facts which lie outside the immediate range of material experience. It results that, the further course of in changing habituation, those imponderable relations, conventions, claims and perquisites, that make up the time-worn system of law and custom will unavoidably also be brought under review and will be revised and reorganised in the light of the same new principles of validity that are found to be sufficient in dealing with material facts.

Given time and a sufficiently exacting run of experience, and it will follow necessarily that much the same standards of truth and finality will come to govern men's knowledge and valuation of facts throughout; whether the facts in question lie in the domain of material things or in the domain of those imponderable conventions and preconceptions that decide what is right and proper in human intercourse. It follows necessarily, because the same persons, bent by the same discipline and habituation, take stock of both and are required to get along with both during the same lifetime. More or less rigorously the same scope and method of knowledge and valuation will control the thinking of the same individuals throughout; at least to the extent that any given article of faith and usage which is palpably at cross purposes with this main intellectual bent will soon begin to seem immaterial and irrelevant and will tend to become obsolete by neglect.

Such has always been the fate which overtakes any notable articles of faith and usage that belong to a bygone point of view. Any established system of law and order will remain securely stable only on condition that it he kept in line or brought into line to conform with those canons of validity that have the vogue for the time being; and the vogue is a matter of habits of thought ingrained by everyday experience. And the moral is that any established system of law and custom is due to undergo a revision of its constituent principles so soon as a new order of economic life has had time materially to affect the community's habits of thought. But all the while the changeless native proclivities of the race will assert themselves in some measure in any eventual revision of the received institutional system; and always they will stand ready eventually to break the ordered scheme of things into a paralytic mass of confusion if it can not be bent into some passable degree of congruity with the paramount native needs of life.

What is likely to arrest the attention of any student of the modern era from the outset is the peculiar character of its industry and of its intellectual outlook; particularly the scope and method of modern science and technology. The intellectual life of modern Europe and its cultural dependencies differs notably from what has gone before. There is all about it an air of matter-of-fact both in its technology and in its science; which culminates in a "mechanistic conception" of all those things with which scientific inquiry is concerned and in the light of which many of the dread realities of the Middle Ages look like superfluous make-believe.

But it has been only during the later decades of the modern era -- during that time interval that might fairly be called the post-modern era -- that this mechanistic conception of things has begun seriously to affect the current system of knowledge and belief; and it has not hitherto seriously taken effect except in technology and in the material sciences. So that it has not hitherto seriously invaded the established scheme of institutional arrangements, the system of law and custom, which governs the relations of men to one another and defines their mutual rights, obligations, advantages and disabilities. But it should reasonably be expected that this established system of rights, duties, proprieties and disabilities will also in due time come in for something in the way of a revision, to bring it all more nearly into congruity with that matter-of-fact conception of things that lies at the root of the late-modern civilisation.

The constituent principles of the established system of law and custom are of the nature of imponderables, of course; but they are imponderables which have been conceived and formulated in terms of a different order from those that are convincing to the twentieth-century scientists and engineers. Whereas the line of advance of the scientists and engineers, dominated by their mechanistic conception of things, appears to be the main line of march for modern civilisation. It should seem reasonable to expect, therefore, that the scheme of law and custom will also fall into line with this mechanistic conception that appears to mark the apex of growth in modern intellectual life. But hitherto the "due time" needed for the adjustment has apparently not been had, or perhaps the experience which drives men in the direction of a mechanistic conception of all things has not hitherto been driving them hard enough or unremittingly enough to carry such a revision of ideas out in the system of law and custom. The modern point of view in matters of law and custom appears to be somewhat in arrears, as measured by the later advance in science and technology.

But just now the attention of thoughtful men centers on questions of practical concern, questions of law and usage, brought to a focus by the flagrant miscarriage of that organisation of Christendom that has brought the War upon the civilised nations. The paramount question just now is, what to do to save the civilised nations from irretrievable disaster, and what further may be accomplished by taking thought so that no similar epoch of calamities shall be put in train for the next generation. It is realised that there must be something in the way of a "reconstruction" of the scheme of things; and it is also realised, though more dimly, that the reconstruction must be carried out with a view to the security of life under such conditions as men will put up with, rather than with a view to the impeccable preservation of the received scheme of law and custom. All of which is only saying that the constituent principles of the modern point of view are to be taken under advisement, reviewed and -- conceivably -- revised and brought into line, in so far as these principles are constituent elements of that received scheme of law and custom that is spoken of as the status quo. It is the status quo in respect of law and custom, not in respect of science and technology or of knowledge and belief, that is to be brought under review. Law and custom, it is believed, may be revised to meet the requirements of civilised men's knowledge and belief; but no man of sound mind hopes to revise the modern system of knowledge and belief so as to bring it all into conformity with the time-worn scheme of law and custom of the status quo.

Therefore the bearing of this stabilised modern point of view, stabilised in the eighteenth century, on these questions of practical concern is of present interest, -- its practical value as ground for a reasonably hopeful reconstruction of the war-shattered scheme of use and wont; its possible serviceability as a basis of enduring settlement; as well as the share which its constituent principles have had in the creation of that status quo out of which this epoch of calamities has been precipitated.

The status quo ante, in which the roots of this growth of misfortunes and impossibilities are to be found, lies within the modern era, of course, and it is nowise to be decried as an alien, or even as an unforeseen, outgrowth of this modern era. By and large, this eighteenth-century stabilised modern point of view has governed men's dealings within this era, and its constituent principles of right and honest living must therefore, presumptively, be held answerable for the disastrous event of it all, -- at least to the extent that they have permissively countenanced the growth of those sinister conditions which have now ripened into a state of world-wide shame and confusion.

How and how far is this modern point of view, this body of legal and moral principles established in the eighteenth century, to be accounted an accessory to this crime? And if it be argued that this complication of atrocities has come on, not because of these principles of conduct which are so dear to civilised men and so blameless in their sight, but only in spite of them; then, what is the particular weakness or shortcoming inherent in this body of principles which has allowed such a growth of malignant conditions to go on and gather head? If the modern point of view, these settled principles of conduct by which modern men collectively are actuated in what they will do and in what they will permit, -- if these canons and standards of clean and honest living have proved to be a fatal snare; then it becomes an urgent question: Is it safe, or sane to go into the future by the light of these same established canons of right, equity, and propriety that so have been tried and found wanting?

Perhaps the question should rather take the less didactic form: Will the present experience of calamities induce men to revise these established principles of conduct, and the specifications of the code based on them, so effectually as to guard against any chance of return to the same desperate situation in the calculable future? Can the discipline of recent experience and the insight bred by the new order of knowledge and belief, re-enforced by the shock of the present miscarriage, be counted on to bring such a revision of these principles of law and custom as will preclude a return to that status quo ante from which this miscarriage of civilisation has resulted? The latter question is more to the point. History teaches that men, taken collectively, learn by habituation rather than by precept and reflection; particularly as touches those underlying principles of truth and validity on which the effectual scheme of law and custom finally rests.

In the last analysis it resolves itself into a question as to how and how far the habituation of the recent past, mobilised by the shock of the present conjuncture, will have affected the frame of mind of the common man in these civilised countries; for in the last analysis and with due allowance for a margin of tolerance it is the frame of mind of the common man that makes the foundation of society in the modern world; even though the elder statesmen continue to direct its motions from day to day by the light of those principles that were found good some time before yesterday. And the fortunes of the civilised world, for good or ill, have come to turn on the deeds of commission and of omission of these advanced peoples among whom the frame of mind of the common man is the finally conditioning circumstance in what may safely be done or left undone. The advice and consent of the common run has latterly come to be indispensable to the conduct of affairs among civilised men, somewhat in the same degree in which the community is to be accounted a civilised people. It is indispensable at least in a permissive way, at least to the extent that no line of policy can long be pursued successfully without the permissive tolerance of the common run; and the margin of tolerance in the case appears to be narrower the more alert and the more matter-of-fact the frame of mind of the common man.