Now and then they
touched on graver matters. He upheld all that was old, and believed we
can have no better institutions in the future than those which have
already existed in the past. Ideala had begun to think differently.
"I am sure it is a mistake to be for ever looking back to the past for
precedents," she said. "The past has its charm, of course, but it is
the charm of the charnel house--it is the dead past, and what was good
for one age is bad for another."
"As one man's meat is another man's poison?" he said.
"Proverbs prove nothing," she answered lightly. "Have you noticed that
they go in pairs? There is always one for each side of an argument.
'One man's meat is another man's poison' is met by 'What is sauce for
the goose is sauce for the gander'--and so on. But don't you think it
absurd to cling to old customs that are dying a natural death? Learn of
the past, if you like, but live in the present, and make your laws to
meet its needs. It is this eternal waiting on the past to copy it
rather than to be warned by its failures, to do as it did, under the
impression, apparently, that we must succeed better than it did,
following in its footsteps though we know they led to ruin once, and,
because the way was pleasant, being surprised to find that it must end
again in disaster--it is this abandonment of all hope of finding new
and efficacious remedies for the old diseases of society that has
checked our progress for hundreds of years, and will keep the world in
some respects just as it was at the time of the Crucifixion.
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