There Are No New Plots or Principles

In facing the present and the future we must always draw upon the experiences and the principles of the past. Of course we pass through the limits of this life only once, but other men have been through before, and things which seem new to us now we shall find, in reviewing history and human experience, are not essentially different from what has been faced before. It is true that there are new players, new settings and scenery, new weapons and new words, but basically there are no new plots and no new principles. Whether a man faces a battle-ax or an atom bomb, whether he is fighting for a cottage or a country or a continent (or a world), whether he steals a dollar or a whole domain, whether he is a tyrant in his own little town or a tyrant over millions of men, we are still dealing with essentially the same human nature, the same false philosophies opposed to the same eternal principles, the same subtle suggestions and the same appeals to evils and appetites and excesses. The costumes and the curtain may be new, but the principles and the basic problems go right back to the roots—back, no doubt, before the world was. There are no new plots; there are no new principles. Honor and honesty, modesty and morality, moral courage and kindness, tolerance and temperance, freedom—freedom for the search for truth, freedom for the mind and spirit of man, willing work and abhorrence of waste, humility and faith before God and trust in timeless truths—these are still among the essentials that must go into making of the safety and soundness of our future. And despite new players, new words, and new weapons, we must still look to the past for the principles that will preserve us in the present and the future. None of the basic laws of life, of causes and consequences, has yet been set aside.