2. Meanwhile in Europe, across the blue seas of the Eastern Mediterranean, a new thing had come to pass: an organisation of human life different in form and in intention because different in mind and spirit. By its means the intellectual powers and artistic achievements of man were swiftly to be raised to an unimagined splendour, and, even so, _to remain unexhausted_: we say “unexhausted” because the inspiring and energising ideas which Greek genius was the first to realise and accept have never ceased to operate, being in fact the intellectual principles upon which Western civilisation has been constructed, and providing the ideal towards which the development of society is still directed. Doubtless there is terribly much to deplore in modern life; we are far from wisdom, peace and true prosperity; it may be doubted whether the conditions of the poor under modern industrialism are not, in places, worse than anything even the East can show. And yet there is one incalculable difference revolutionising the whole prospect. Unlike the East, we do not acquiesce in existing evils. We are not exhausted, not apathetically willing to accept things as they are. We spurn as nonsense and cowardice any suggestions that the limit of human development has been attained. Vehemently and hopefully we insist on the achievement of better things. Not all the errors of the past and the resultant evils of the present daunt us. We are rebels against our failures, and our discontent is the measure of our vitality. This instinct for improvement, which is the characteristic of Western life, we owe--an infinite debt--to the people whose coming into history we have now, briefly, to relate.