Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.
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