¶ Custom
Index Entry
Custom: Lest One Good Custom Corrupt the World:
"We all know the lines
'The old order changeth, yielding place to the new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,’
"But we’re not so familiar with the next line, which is:
‘Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’
"That’s the point about one good custom-- if change is
inexorable-- holding on to a custom which was satisfactory
yesterday, may be an obstacle to evolution today.
"We are now at a point where all of humanity is coming into
a new fundamental relationship in Universe. . . . It’s man’s
mind that has access to those eternal principles. There are
no exceptions to the principles therefore they are inherently
eternal. The larger complex of Universe is never predicted
by the lesser. It is grand strategies of working from the
whole to the particular which will characterize our education
in the future, abandoning any thought that the parts are
going to tell you about the whole. That’s what Tennyson was
trying to get at."
¶ Citations
- RBF in Johns Hopkins Lecture, 3 Oct’73
