Laudator Temporis Acti

Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. V (1939; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 385-386 (footnotes omitted):

Archaism may be defined as a reversion from the mimesis of contemporary creative personalities to a mimesis of the ancestors of the tribe: that is to say, as a lapse from the dynamic movement of Civilization to the static condition of Primitive Mankind in its latest state. It may be defined, again, as one of those attempts at a forcible stoppage of change which result, in so far as they succeed, in the production of social enormities. In the third place, Archaism may be taken as an example of that attempt to 'peg' a broken-down and disintegrating society which, in another context, we have found to be the common aim of human Utopias and of those insect societies to which the arrested human societies approximate. In corresponding terms we may define Futurism as a repudiation of any mimesis of anybody—present or past, creative or conservative—and also as one of those attempts at a forcible accomplishment of change which result, in so far as they succeed, in the production of social revolutions that defeat their own purpose by tumbling over into reaction. In fine, Futurism only avoids the static immobility of Archaism at the price of moving like a convict on a treadmill or like a captive mouse in a revolving cage; and the futility of this revolutionary motion is summed up in the devastating aphorism Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.