Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/287

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The Green Bag.

of his life. Lord Bacon compares those who value the wisdom of the past as an end rather than as an instrument for the discov ery of truth, to the suitors of Penelope who preferred the handmaid to the mistress. We should do justice to the past without enslaving the present, with one hand cling

ing to past and approved foundations, with the other seizing and incorporating all new material — giving full freedom to the thought of the present without forgetting that it in its turn must be transcended by the widening consciousness of the future.