All the old haze of wonder is melting away from it; and the old local enthusiasms, which depended so largely on ignorance and isolation, are melting likewise.

Knowledge has accumulated in a way never before dreamed of.

The fountains of the past seem to have been broken up, and to be pouring all their secrets into the consciousness of the present.

For the first time man's wide and varied history has become a coherent whole to him.

Partly a cause and partly a result of this, a new sense has sprung up in him--an intense self-consciousness as to his own position; and his entire view of himself is undergoing a vague change: whilst the positive basis on which knowledge has been placed, has given it a constant and coercive force, and has made the same change common to the whole civilised world.
Thought and feeling amongst the western nations are conforming to a single pattern: they are losing their old chivalrous character, their possibilities of isolated conquest and intellectual adventure.