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This enforced maintenance of older concepts has for its result this: At any given period in history the ideas of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. The facts of the twentieth century are approached with the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth. And as our conscious acts are modified by those ancient concepts, our acts are necessarily behind the times. Changing conditions constantly demand revision of the conduct of society, but if that conduct—so far as it is consciously ours—is based on unchanging ideas, there must be conflict. There has been, always. Take some well-known historic instance, as the French Revolution.

Here was a long-established social relation, that of feudalism, lineal descendant of still remoter patriarchal grouping, producing in the conscious mind a highly developed concept or group of concepts, described in the phrase, “l’ancien régime.” Meanwhile the conditions which made feudalism an advantageous form of social relation changed intrinsically. The natural basis in fact was gone, but the idea remained firmly intrenched in the mind. Acting under the idea, feudalism was maintained, but the change in conditions proceeded irresistibly.