Contemporary Evolution
by St George Jackson Mivart (9780217196956)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THREE IDEALS. '"THERE are thus, as we have seen, now struggling -- for supremacy THREE DISTINCT IDEALS, three distinct socio-political systems, and two are mixed up and blended in the great movement which has been described as reviving paganism. That great modern movement has been and is so powerful because it is invigorated by the temporary union of these two essentially divergent and conflicting tendencies of ideals. (i.) The first of these is the mainly unconscious and partly conscious real pagan revival and revolt against God,?PAGANISM. (2.) The other is the spirit of freedom, the assertion of natural right, and revolt against the domination of man (merely as man) over his fellow,?CIVICISM. Besides these there is also that with which the pagan revival has conflicted and conflicts, namely :? (3.) The tendency to preserve, or more or less bring back, the mediaeval Christian theocracy,?MEDIEVALISM. These three tendencies are actually mixed up in the most complex manner in modern, social, and political struggles, as we shall shortly see. The efforts of those who strive for the third ideal need not here occupy us, since our subject is the action upon Christianity of the modern movement?on the supposition that it continues. The first tendency, that towards true conscious paganism, may indeed, as was said in the first part of this essay, present us with some startling developments in the future. Nevertheless, when once completely dissociated from the spirit of civicism, its force must greatly diminish, and if the re-appearance of a Spanish grand inquisitor in the flesh is about as likely as that of a plesiosaurus, a general enduring return to the old paganism must be still more unlikely, though the spread of pantheism at the present time is...

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