comparison with which the present is nothing. Progress,
development,--those are modern words. The modern idea is to leave the past
and press onward to something new.

But what is progress going to do with the past, and with the present? How
is it going to treat them? With ignominy, or respect? Should it break with
them altogether, or rise out of them, with its roots still deep in the
older time? What attitude shall progressives take toward the existing
order, toward those institutions of conservatism, the Constitution, the
laws, and the courts?

Are those thoughtful men who fear that we are now about to disturb the
ancient foundations of our institutions justified in their fear? If they
are, we ought to go very slowly about the processes of change. If it is
indeed true that we have grown tired of the institutions which we have so
carefully and sedulously built up, then we ought to go very slowly and
very carefully about the very dangerous task of altering them. We ought,
therefore, to ask ourselves, first of all, whether thought in this country
is tending to do anything by which we shall retrace our steps, or by which
we shall change the whole direction of our development?

I believe, for one, that you cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely
plant the tree of liberty in soil which is not native to it. I believe
that the ancient traditions of a people are its ballast; you cannot make a
_tabula rasa_ upon which to write a political program. You cannot take a
new sheet of paper and determine what your life shall be to-morrow. You
must knit the new into the old. You cannot put a new patch on an old
garment without ruining it; it must be not a patch, but something woven
into the old fabric, of practically the same pattern, of the same texture
and intention. If I did not believe that to be progressive was to preserve