ABSTRACT
Throughout history there runs one main trend: a progressive differentiation, or passage from simple to more complex forms in behavior, thought, and social organization. Over sufficiently long periods this tendency is unmistakable, and in the recent acceleration of technical development it has been so intensified as to dominate all other social processes. This chapter, in emphasizing the impress of the tradition and relatively neglecting the more balanced and persistent characteristics on which it is imposed, deliberately presents a parody of the general condition in each period. We can now apply this method of thought to the development of European man and the diagnosis of the present condition of Western civilization. During the time when East and West followed different paths it was Europe, and later the West, that led the main trend of differentiation and development.
