es respected the
institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of
changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as
there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity
of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could
link with the other. Men would be little better than the flies of a
summer.

* * * * *

To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten
thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice,
we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach
to look into its defects or corruptions, but with due caution; that he
should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion;
that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds
of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.[1]

[Footnote 1: Edmund Burke: _Reflections on the French Revolution_
(George Bell & Sons, 1888), pp. 366-68.]

PERSONAL OR CLASS OPPOSITION TO CHANGE. Sincere fear of the
possible evils of novelty in the disorganization which it promotes,
habituation to established ways, or a sentimental and
aesthetic allegiance to them--all these are factors that determine
genuine opposition to change. But aversion to change
may be generalized into a philosophical attitude by those who
have special personal or class reasons for disliking specific
changes. The hand-workers in the early nineteenth century
stoned the machinists and machines which threw them out of
employment. Every change does discommode some class or
classes of persons, and part of the opposition to specific
changes comes from those whom they would adversely affect.
It is not surprising that liquor interests should be opposed to
prohibition, that theatrical managers should have protested
against a tax on the theater, or those with great incomes
against an excess profits tax. Selfish opposition to specific
changes is, indeed, frequently veiled in the disguise of plausible
reasons for opposition to change in general. Those who
fear the results to their own personal or class interests of some
of the radical social legislation of our own day may disguise
those more or less consciously realized motives under the form
of impartial philosophical opposition to social change in general.
They may find philosophical justification for maintaining
unmodified an established order which redounds to their
own advantage.

UNCRITICAL