As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind…
““As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy with which we all begin as children, that the institutions under which we live, including our legal ways of distributing income and allowing people to own things, are natural, like the weather. They are not. Because they exist everywhere in our little world, we take it for granted that they have always existed and must always exist, and that they are self-acting. That is a dangerous mistake. They are in fact transient makeshifts; and many of them would not be obeyed, even by well-meaning people, if there were not a policeman within call and a prison within reach. They are being changed continually by Parliament, because we are never satisfied with them… At the elections some candidates get votes by promising to make new laws or to get rid of old ones, and others by promising to keep things just as they are. This is impossible. Things will not stay as they are. Changes that nobody ever believed possible take place in a few generations. Children nowadays think that spending nine years in school, oldage and widows’ pensions, votes for women, and short-skirted ladies in Parliament or pleading in barristers’ wigs in the courts are part of the order of Nature, and always were and ever shall be; but their great-grandmothers would have set down anyone who told them that such things were coming as mad, and anyone who wanted them to come as wicked.””
About This Quote
This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.
He argues that social and economic structures are human-made, not natural, and must be continuously reexamined and reformed.
In simple terms: Societal rules are created, not immutable.
Question assumptions about “natural” systems.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- policy reform
- education curricula
- public debates
- activist campaigns
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- What “natural” institutions do you accept without question?
- How can societies balance stability with necessary reform?
Change often meets resistance from entrenched interests.