ABSTRACT
In that interminable torrent of progression in which all things move man may make attempts to stand still, but all his efforts will be futile. What he considers perfect to-day, he is willing to alter a little to-morrow. The omnipresent spirit of Motion is within him and around him; and, almost without being conscious of it, man moves along with the rest of things. Although thus perpetually changing and making changes, men scarcely ever like these changes when subjected to their influence for the first time. We become accustomed to go through life, as it were, in a kind of jog-trot; and anything which tends to accelerate our speed, or make our journey more easy and pleasant, is always, at the beginning regarded with dislike. Afterwards, however, when we have become habituated to the new order of things, and are about to make a further remove, we cling to the last change with as much pertinacity as we at first displayed in rejecting it. Although old shoes may fit us easier than new ones, we are never thereby prevented from throwing the old aside and obtaining the new; for everything—an institution as well as an article of apparel—must be new before it can be old.
