A second characteristic of our time is the prevalence of nationalism. This is still spreading, affecting new communities, more peripheral regions and so-called backward peoples.

Industrialization based on machinery, already referred to as a characteristic of our age, is but one aspect of the revolution that is being wrought by technology.

As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so.

Probably people always feel that they are living in a time of transition, but we can hardly be mistaken perhaps in thinking that this is an era of particularly momentous change, rapid and proceeding at an ever quickening rate.

It is natural to try to understand one's own time and to seek to analyse the forces that move it.

There is a great interest in comparative religion and a desire to understand faiths other than our own and even to experiment with exotic cults.