Everything in the past was praised if it had led up to the present, and blamed if it would have led up to anything else.

In short everybody has been searching the past for the secret of our success.

Very soon everybody may be searching the past for the secret of our failure.
They may be talking in such terms as they use after a motor smash or a bankruptcy; where was the blunder?
They may be writing such books as generals write after a military defeat; whose was the fault?
The failure will be assumed even in being explained.
For industrialism is no longer a vulgar success.
On the contrary, it is now too tragic even to be vulgar.
Under the cloud of doom the modern city has taken on something of the dignity of Babel or Babylon.

Whether we call it the nemesis of Capitalism or the nightmare of Bolshevism makes no difference; the rich grumble as much as the poor; every one is discontented, and none more than those who are chiefly discontented with the discontent.
About that discord we are in perfect harmony; about that disease we all think alike, whatever we think of the diagnosis or the cure.
By whatever process in the past we might have come to the right place, practical facts in the present and future will prove more and more that we have come to the wrong place.
And for many a premonition will grow more and more of a probability; that we may or may not await another century or another world to see the New Jerusalem rebuilt and shining on our fields; but in the flesh we shall see Babylon fall.
But there is another way in which that metaphor of the forked road will make the position plain.

Medieval society was not the right place; it was only the right turning.