The uncritical routine of which Burke is the sponsor would here deprive the mass of men of virtue.

Yet in modern civilization the whole strength of any custom depends upon exactly that consciousness of right which Burke restricted to his aristocracy.

Our real need is less the automatic response to ancient stimulus than power to know what stimulus has social value.

We need, that is to say, the gift of criticism rather than the gift of inert acceptance.

Not, of course, that the habits which Burke so earnestly admired are at all part of our nervous endowment in any integral sense.