of poets absolutely arose out of the mildness of antiquaries.
So the great mediaeval revival was a memory of the Roman Empire.
So the Reformation looked back to the Bible and Bible times.
So the modern Catholic movement has looked back to patristic times.
But that modern movement which many would count the most
anarchic of all is in this sense the most conservative of all.
Never was the past more venerated by men than it was by the
French Revolutionists. They invoked the little republics of
antiquity with the complete confidence of one who invokes the gods.
The Sans-culottes believed (as their name might imply) in a return
to simplicity. They believed most piously in a remote past;
some might call it a mythical past. For some strange reason
man must always thus plant his fruit trees in a graveyard.
Man can only find life among the dead. Man is a misshapen monster,
with his feet set forward and his face turned back. He can make
the future luxuriant and gigantic, so long as he is thinking
about the past. When he tries to think about the future itself,
his mind diminishes to a pin point with imbecility, which some
call Nirvana. To-morrow is the Gorgon; a man must only see it
mirrored in the shining shield of yesterday. If he sees it directly
he is turned to stone. This has been the fate of all those who
have really seen fate and futurity as clear and inevitable.
The Calvinists, with their perfect creed of predestination,
were turned to stone. The modern sociological scientists
(with their excruciating Eugenics) are turned to stone.
The only difference is that the Puritans make dignified,
and the Eugenists somewhat amusing, statues.

But there is one feature in the past which more than all
the rest defies and depresses the moderns and drives them