The past, save what we discover in our generation, is our sole storehouse of materials. And a very small part of our useful knowledge in the industrial arts, in science, in social organization and administration does come from our own generation. It is the accumulated experience of generations of men. We can, out of this mass of materials, select whatever is useful in clarifying the issues of the present, whatever helps us to accomplish those purposes which we have, after critical consideration, decided to be useful and serviceable. If, for example, we decide to build a bridge, it is of importance that we know all that men have in the past discovered of mechanical relations and industrial art which will enable us to build a bridge well. If we want to establish an educational system in some backward portion of the world, it is useful for us to know what methods men have used in similar situations. Whatever we decide to do, we are so much the better off, if we know all that men before us have learned in analogous instances. But to use the inheritance of the past implies an analysis of present problems, and an acceptance of the course to be pursued. The experience of the past, the heritage of knowledge that has come down to us, is so various and extensive that choices must be made. The historian in writing even a comprehensive history of a country must still make choices and omissions. Similarly, in using knowledge inherited from the past as materials, we must have specific problems to govern our choice. The statistician could collect innumerable statistics; he collects only those which have a bearing on his subject. The lawyer searches out that part of the legal tradition which is applicable to his own case. Without some lead or clue we should lose ourselves in the multifariousness of transmitted knowledge at our disposal. To use the past as an instrument for furthering present purposes implies neither veneration nor disparagement of it. We neither condemn nor praise the past as a whole; we regard specific institutions, customs, or ideas, as adequate or inadequate, as serviceable or disserviceable. In general, it may be said that the value of any still extant part of the past, be it a work of art, a habit, a tradition, has very little to do with its origin. The instinct of eating is still useful though it has a long history. The works of the Old Masters are not really great because they are old, nor are the works of contemporaries either good or bad because they are new. Man himself is to be estimated no differently, whether he is descended from the angels or the apes.