mental fatigue, and the lust for alien philosophies.
We have not only left undone those things that we ought to have done,
but we have even left undone those things that we wanted to do

It is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of all the
ages, that he has got the good out of these successive human experiments.
I know not what to say in answer to this, except to ask the reader
to look at the modern man, as I have just looked at the modern man--
in the looking-glass. Is it really true that you and I are two starry
towers built up of all the most towering visions of the past?
Have we really fulfilled all the great historic ideals one after
the other, from our naked ancestor who was brave enough to till
a mammoth with a stone knife, through the Greek citizen and the
Christian saint to our own grandfather or great-grandfather, who may
have been sabred by the Manchester Yeomanry or shot in the '48?
Are we still strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough
to spare them? Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have
either speared or spared? When we decline (in a marked manner)
to fly the red flag and fire across a barricade like our grandfathers,
are we really declining in deference to sociologists--or to soldiers?
Have we indeed outstripped the warrior and passed the ascetical saint?
I fear we only outstrip the warrior in the sense that we should
probably run away from him. And if we have passed the saint,
I fear we have passed him without bowing.

This is, first and foremost, what I mean by the narrowness
of the new ideas, the limiting effect of the future.
Our modern prophetic idealism is narrow because it has undergone
a persistent process of elimination. We must ask for new
things because we are not allowed to ask for old things.