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This power of directing action by concepts is at once our great advantage and disadvantage. If the concepts are true, if they are founded on fact and in accordance with law, they promote advantageous conduct; if they are false, they promote disadvantageous conduct. Even if once true, that is, as true as the brains of a given period, acting on the knowledge of that period, could comprehend, they become mischievous if not changed to suit the larger brains and larger knowledge of a later time. As shown in the previous chapter, this is precisely our difficulty. We are always being hindered by our back-acting brain. Society progresses far more rigidly than our recognition of it. The acts and facts of to-day continually diverge from the concepts of yesterday.

History exhibits an endless series of man’s efforts to check his own growth. Patient, persistent, ingenious, devout, he has laboured incessantly to stay where he was—where he used to be; and is continually astonished to find himself still in motion and going upward. In dealing with the average human brain, these deterrent forces are constantly met; the mere physical resistance to a new process of thought; and a conscious, yes, and conscientious, resistance to a concept not in accordance with the previous supply.