Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Contempt for Former Times
Bertrand Russell, "On Being Modern-Minded," Unpopular Essays (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1921), pp. 88-94 (at 88):
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We imagine ourselves at the apex of intelligence, and cannot believe that the quaint clothes and cumbrous phrases of former times can have invested people and thoughts that are still worthy of our attention.Id. (at 89):
The desire to be contemporary is of course new only in degree; it has existed to some extent in all previous periods that believed themselves to be progressive. The Renaissance had a contempt for Gothic centuries that had preceded it; the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries covered priceless mosaics with whitewash; the Romantic movement despised the age of the heroic couplet.
