o borrow; because, throughout the
many-centuried past, hundreds of thousands of persons have devoted their
entire lives to putting these things to the test until they were able to
bring about these substantial developments. If all that is to be ignored
and an effort is made to re-create those agencies in our own country and
in our own way, and thus effect the hoped-for advancement, many
generations would pass by and still the goal would not be reached. Observe
for instance that in other countries they persevered over a long period
until finally they discovered the power of steam and by means of it were
enabled easily to perform the heavy tasks which were once beyond human
strength. How many centuries it would take if we were to abandon the use
of this power and instead strain every nerve to invent a substitute. It is
therefore preferable to keep on with the use of steam and at the same time
continuously to examine into the possibility of there being a far greater
force available. One should regard the other technological advances,
sciences, arts and political formulae of proven usefulness in the same
light--i.e., those procedures which, down the ages, have time and again
been put to the test and whose many uses and advantages have demonstrably
resulted in the glory and greatness of the state, and the well-being and
progress of the people. Should all these be abandoned, for no valid
reason, and other methods of reform be attempted, by the time such reforms
might eventuate, and their advantages might be put to proof, many years
would go by, and many lives. Meanwhile, "we are still at the first bend in
the road."(74)

The superiority of the present in relation to the past consists in this,
that the present can take over and adopt as a model many things which have
been tried and tested and the great benefits of which have been
demonstrated in the past, and that it can make its own new discoveries and
by these augment its valuable inheritance. It is clear, then, that the
accomplishment and experience of the past are known and available to the
present, while the discoveries peculiar to the present were unknown to the
past. This presupposes that the later generation is made up of persons of
ability; otherwise, how many a later generation has lacked even so much as
a drop out of the boundless ocean of knowledge that was its forbears'.

Reflect a little: let us suppose that, through the power of God, certain
individuals are plac