Two great conditions, making for continued improvement of the moral and intellectual traditions, characterise, then, Western civilisation. First, within each nation there is going on the process of emancipation of all human faculties, so that they enter into the freest possible competition with one another on a footing of equality; this process, although now far advanced in all the leading nations, is still being carried further, and the whole trend of modern legislation is to confirm the change and hasten it to its completion[151]. Secondly, there is a circle of peoples whose ideas are thrown into the arena of rivalry, to suffer extinction or to gain universal acceptance. This circle also is constantly widening by the inclusion of peoples hitherto outside it; and each new admission, as of Japan in recent years, is a new stimulus to the further evolution of the collective mind of each nation concerned. Both these conditions depend upon improved social organisation. How then has this great change of social organisation been effected? To put this question is to approach an immense subject, the history of liberty and toleration. I can only make one or two brief remarks. It has been suggested by many authors, notably by Kidd in his volume on _Western Civilisation_, that we owe this great change to the Christian religion. It is pointed out that the Christian religion, unlike most earlier religions, was from the first not a national or State religion but a universal religion, and that its adoption has weakened the tyranny of the State by breaking up its alliance with religion. Further, it is a religion which, by its doctrine of the immortality of the souls of all men, has tended to give dignity and value to each individual life, quite independently of personal status. Again, by its teaching of universal charity, it has to some extent softened and moralised the relations of men and of societies. But, that the replacement of a national religion by a universal religion which teaches the equality of all believers does not suffice to secure continued collective evolution is shown by the instances of Bhuddism and Mohammedanism. Both of these are of this character, yet both have failed to render continuously progressive the societies that have accepted them. That the spread of the Christian religion does not in itself suffice to account for the evolution from the ancient to the modern type of social organisation is shown also by the fact that it had held undisputed sway among the peoples of Western Europe for more than a thousand years before social evolution made any considerable advance. Throughout that period, religion constantly called in the civil and military power of the State to enforce the acceptance of its dogmas. And that its teachings did not suffice to produce religious or civil tolerance is shown by the fierce and incessant persecutions of heretics and the many religious wars that fill the history of medieval Europe.