The Mind Made-Up

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Apropos of the newly-formed Conservative-Progressive Debating Union a paragraph from Robinson's "The Mind in the Making" may be quoted to some purpose"

". . . do not the conservatively minded realize that their whole attitude toward the world and its betterment is based on an assumption that finds no least support in the Great Book of the Past? Does it not make plain that the "conservative" so far as he is consistent and lives up to his professions is fatally in the wrong? The so-called "radical" is also almost always wrong, for no one can foresee the future. But he works on a right assumption--namely, that the future has so far always proved different from the past and that it will continue to do so. Some of us, indeed, see that the future is tending to become more and more rapidly and widely different from the past. The conservative himself furnishes the only illustration of his theory, and even that is highly inconclusive. His general frame of mind appears to remain constant, but he finds himself defending and rejecting very different things. The great issue may, according to the period, be a primitive taboo, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, the Athanasian creed, the Inquisition, the Geocentric theory, monarchy by the grace of God, witchcraft, slavery, war, capitalism, private property, or noble isolation. All of these tend to appear to the conservative under the aspect of eternity, but all of these things have come, many of them have gone, and the remainder would seem to be subject to undreamed-of modifications as time goes on." Verily the old order changeth!   MALCOLM H. DILL '20, 3S.L.A.   December 12, 1922.