My kind of thought and observation is limited to the physiognomy of the actual. At the point when the experience of the “judge of men” _vis-à-vis_ his environment, and that of the “man of action” _vis-à-vis_ his facts, become ineffective, there also this insight finds its limit. The existence of these two ages is a _fact of historical experience_; more, our experiencing of the primitive Culture consists not only in surveying, in its relics, a self-contained and closed-off thing, but also in reacting to its deeper meaning by virtue of an inward relation to it which persists in us. But the second age opens to us another and quite different kind of experience. It was an incident, the sense of which cannot now be scrutinized, that the type of the higher Culture appeared suddenly in the field of human history. Quite possibly, indeed, it was some sudden event in the domain of earth-history that brought forth a new and different form into phenomenal existence. But the fact that we have before us eight such Cultures, all of the same build, the same development, and the same duration, justifies us in _looking at them comparatively_, and therefore justifies our treating them as comparable, studying them comparatively, and obtaining from our study a knowledge which we can extend backwards over lost periods and forwards over the future--provided always that a Destiny of a different order does not replace this form-world, suddenly and basically, by another. Our licence to proceed thus comes from general experience of organic being. As in the history of the Raptores or the Coniferæ we cannot prophesy whether and when a new species will arise, so in that of Cultural history we cannot say whether and when a new Culture shall be. But from the moment when a new being is conceived in the womb, or a seed sinks into the earth, we do know _the inner form of this new life-course_; and we know that the quiet course of its development and fulfilment may be disturbed by the pressure of external powers, but never altered. This experience teaches, further, that the Civilization which at this present time has gripped the earth’s whole surface is not a third age, but a stage--a necessary stage--of the Western Culture, distinguished from its analogues only by the forcefulness of its extension-tendency. Here experience ends, and all speculation on what new forms will govern the life of future mankind (or, for that matter, whether there will be any such new forms) all building of majestic card-houses on the foundation of “it should be, it shall be” is mere trifling--far too futile, it seems to me, to justify one single life of any value being expended on it.