Uncritical disparagement. The other extreme is represented by the position that old things are bad because they are old, and new things good because they are new. This is illustrated in an extreme though trivial form by faddists of every kind. There are people who chiefly pride themselves on being up-to-the-minute, and exhibit an almost pathological fear of being behind the times. This thirst for the novel is seen on various levels, from those who wear the newest styles, and dine at the newest hotels, to those who make a point of reading only the newest books, hearing only the newest music, and discussing the latest theories. For such temperaments, and more or less to most people, there is an intrinsic glamour about the word "new." The physical qualities that are so often associated with newness are carried over into social and intellectual matters, where they do not so completely apply. The new is bright and unfrayed; it has not yet suffered senility and decay. The new is smart and striking; it catches the eye and the attention. Just as old things are dog-eared, worn, and tattered, so are old institutions, habits, and ideas. Just as we want the newest books and phonographs, the latest conveniences in housing and sanitation, so we want the latest modernities in political, social, and intellectual matters. Especially about new ideas, there is the freshness and infinite possibility of youth; every new idea is as yet an unbroken promise. It has not been subjected to the frustrations, disillusions, and compromises to which all theory is subjected in the world of action.[1] Every new idea is an experiment, a possibility, a hope. It may be the long-awaited miracle; it may be the prayed-for solution of all our difficulties.
[Footnote 1: "Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world." (Bertrand Russell: Mysticism and Logic, pp. 60-61.)]
This susceptibility to the novel is peculiarly displayed by those who see nothing but evil in the old. Against the outworn past with its disillusions, its errors, its evils, and its hypocrisies, the new shines out in glorious contrast. There are persons who combine a very genuine sense of present evils with a resilient belief in the possibilities of change. The classic instance of this is seen in the Messianic idea. Even in the worst of times, the pious Jew could count on the saving appearance of the Messiah. Every Utopian is as sure of the salvation promised by his prize solution as he is of the evils which it is intended to rectify. The ardent Socialist may equally divide his energies between pointing out the evils of the capitalist system, and the certain bliss of his Socialist republic. The past is nothing but a festering mass of evils; industry is nothing but slavery, religion nothing but superstition, education nothing but dead traditional formalism, social life nothing but hypocrisy.
Where the past is so darkly conceived, there comes an uncritical welcoming of anything new, anything that will take men away from it. Nothing could be worse than the present or past; anything as yet untried may be better. As Karl Marx told the working classes: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."
The past is, by its ruthless critics, conceived not infrequently as enchaining or enslaving. Particularly, the radical insists, are men enslaved by habits of thought, feeling, and action which are totally inadequate to our present problems and difficulties. War-like emotions, he points out, may have been useful in an earlier civilization, but are now a total disutility. Belief in magic may have been an asset to primitive man in his ignorance; it is not to modern man with his science. The institution of private property may have had its values in building up civilization; its utility is over. We still make stereotyped and archaic reactions where the situation has utterly changed. The institutions, ideas, and habits of the past are at once so compelling and so obsolete that we must make a clear break with the past; we must start with a clean slate. To continue, so we are told, is merely going further and further along the wrong paths; it is like continuing with a broken engine, or without a rudder.
Critical examination of the past. That both positions just discussed are extreme, goes without saying. The past is neither all good nor all bad; it has achieved as well as it has erred. But it is, in any case, all we have. Without the knowledge, the customs, the institutions we have inherited, we should have no advantage at all over our ancestors of ten thousand years ago. Biologically we have not changed. The past is our basic material. Each generation starts with what it finds in the way of cultural achievement, and builds upon that.
Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should take a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well-taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, antiquitas sœculi iuventus mundi. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backwards from ourselves.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bacon: The Advancement of Learning, Collected Works, vol. I, p. 172.]
The past, save what we discover in our generation, is our sole storehouse of materials. And a very small part of our useful knowledge in the industrial arts, in science, in social organization and administration does come from our own generation. It is the accumulated experience of generations of men. We can, out of this mass of materials, select whatever is useful in clarifying the issues of the present, whatever helps us to accomplish those purposes which we have, after critical consideration, decided to be useful and serviceable. If, for example, we decide to build a bridge, it is of importance that we know all that men have in the past discovered of mechanical relations and industrial art which will enable us to build a bridge well. If we want to establish an educational system in some backward portion of the world, it is useful for us to know what methods men have used in similar situations. Whatever we decide to do, we are so much the better off, if we know all that men before us have learned in analogous instances.
But to use the inheritance of the past implies an analysis of present problems, and an acceptance of the course to be pursued. The experience of the past, the heritage of knowledge that has come down to us, is so various and extensive that choices must be made. The historian in writing even a comprehensive history of a country must still make choices and omissions. Similarly, in using knowledge inherited from the past as materials, we must have specific problems to govern our choice. The statistician could collect innumerable statistics; he collects only those which have a bearing on his subject. The lawyer searches out that part of the legal tradition which is applicable to his own case. Without some lead or clue we should lose ourselves in the multifariousness of transmitted knowledge at our disposal.