dominance of the belief in Progress and by the shallow and dogmatic optimism which characterised nineteenth-century Liberalism. It was only an exceptionally original mind, like that of the late T. E. Hulme, that could free itself from the influence of Liberal dogma and could recognise the signs of the times—the passing of the ideals that had dominated European civilisation for four centuries, and the dawn of a new order.
In the years that followed the war this consciousness has become general, at least on the Continent, owing largely to the popularity of Spengler’s well-known book, The Decline of the West. But Spengler’s arbitrary and subjective theorising threw no light upon the inner meaning of the change. A much more profound analysis of the modern situation is to be found in the works of the modern Russian thinkers of the school of Solovyov, above all Nicholas Berdyaev. In his book Der Sinn der Geschichte and in his later essays on ” The New Middle Ages,”
Berdyaev has dealt with the passing of humanism not as an instance of historical fatality, but in its ultimate significance for the spiritual life of humanity, and has shown how the disintegration of the Renaissance culture was the result of a spiritual disunity and conflict which it was never able to overcome.