CHAPTER XVI
THE OLD ADAM AND THE NEW
"Decay," said Seithenyn, "is one thing, and danger is another. Everything that is old must decay. That the embankment is old, I am free to confess; that it is somewhat rotten in parts, I will not altogether deny; that it is any the worse for that, I do most sturdily gainsay. It does its business well: it works well: it keeps out the water from the land and it lets in the wine upon the High Commission of Embankment. Cup-bearer, fill. Our ancestors were wiser than we: they built it in their wisdom; and, if we were to be so rash as to try to mend it, we should only mar it."
"The stonework," said Teithrin, "is sapped and mined: the piles are rotten, broken and dislocated: the floodgates and sluices are leaky and creaky."
"That is the beauty of it," said Seithenyn. "Some parts of it are rotten, and some parts of it are sound."
"It is well," said Elphin, "that some parts are sound: it were better that all were so."
"So I have heard some people say before," said Seithenyn; " perverse people, blind to venerable antiquity: that very unamiable sort of people who are in the habit of indulging their reason. But I say, the parts that are rotten give elasticity to those that are sound: they give them elasticity, elasticity, elasticity. If it were all sound, it would break by its own obstinate stiffness: the soundness is checked by the rottenness, and the stiffness is balanced by the elasticity. There is nothing so dangerous as innovation."—Thomas Love Peacock, The Misfortunes of Elphin.
THE women's movement is a great movement of adaptation. It is not directed against the community, nor against any section of the com-
