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XI

It is impossible in this one chapter to do full justice to so big a subject. Least of all can I hope, with the few remarks I have been able to make on the filiation of ideas, to have convinced you that they are correct in every detail. But I trust I have at least provided sufficient evidence to persuade you of the burden of my argument: that we are still, largely without knowing it, under the influence of ideas which have almost imperceptibly crept into modern thought because they were shared by the founders of what seemed to be radically opposed traditions. In these matters we are to a great extent still guided by ideas which are at least a century old, just as the nineteenth century was mainly guided by the ideas of the eighteenth. But whereas the ideas of Hume and Voltaire, of Adam Smith and Kant, produced the liberalism of the nineteenth century, those of Hegel and Comte, of Feuerbach and Marx, have produced the totalitarianism of the twentieth.

It may well be true that we as scholars tend to overestimate the influence which we can exercise on contemporary affairs. But I doubt whether it is possible to overestimate the influence which ideas have in the long run. And there can be no question that it is our special duty to recognize the currents of thought which still operate in public opinion, to examine their significance, and, if necessary, to refute them. The first part of this duty I have attempted to outline in this chapter.


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