A personal view by Kenneth Clark

'We are so much accustomed to the humanitarian outlook that we forget how little it counted in earlier ages of civilisation. Ask any decent person in England or America what he thinks matters most in human conduct - five to one his answer will be "kindness." It's not a word that would have crossed the lips of any of the earlier heroes of this series.' In this, the final programme, Kenneth Clark shows how the heroic materialism of the past hundred years has been linked with an equally remarkable increase in humanitarianism. The achievement of engineers and scientists - Brunei and Rutherford, for example-has been matched by that of the great reformers like Wilberforce and Shaftesbury. Kenneth Clark's thoughts on the period in which we are now living take him from the English industrial landscape of the 19th century to the skyscrapers of contemporary New York, the world of the radio telescope and the exploration of space.