The same sort of retardation of thought by itself appears, likewise, in our larger and more complicated institutions. For example, in the economic order at the present moment, in spite of its creakiness, there is enough that is humanly valuable to supply a basis for the reconstruction that is so sorely needed. Why, then, do we not delightedly hasten to build a fairer structure upon our present goodness? The usual reply that selfishness stands in the way, is a lazy explanation. “Innate selfishness” is perhaps the trickiest of all our merely plausible general ideas, for it applies to almost anything that we dislike in ourselves or anybody else, yet tells us nothing specific. The sticking-point in economic thinking is the point where particular drives or alternatives are adjusted to one another. This point, unfortunately often, is characterized by economic precedents taken as dictates of reason or nature. Self-imitation, that is to say, has generated an economic orthodoxy which is the true “original sin” of the system. And it is the sacredness of the orthodoxy that makes the gooseflesh rise upon us when we contemplate the possibility of reversing our ways. We have sufficient stamina to stand losses or to get along with less wealth, but the uncertainties of a reconstructive policy make us quail. Thus we trust yesterday’s thought more than we trust any fresh thinking. Orthodoxy, which is the acceptance of yesterday’s agreed-upon conclusions as an assumption that must govern today’s thought, is not a sporadic or merely incidental occurrence; it insinuates itself everywhere; there are as many varieties of it as there are kinds of human association. Political orthodoxies are, of course, rather obvious. The remark is commonplace that parties retain their coherence after the reason for their existence has faded away, and that, at last, lacking genuine meaning, they stand upon trumped-up platforms which often are a blind erected by hunters of office or by those whom they serve. The main support of bad politics is found in men who are not bad but only conventionally good. The difficulty with them is that they treat a petrified idea as if it were a living thought--they are politically orthodox. Our laws, likewise, are streaked with anachronisms that at their best are clumsy and obstructive, but at their worst are instruments--well known as such!--whereby social obligation is evaded and injustice committed. The intellectual clarity of laws and courts is accompanied by an emotional haze, amounting at times to ethical obscurantism, that is taken as the light of a sanctuary, but is in reality the shrinking into itself of a mind that is unready for fresh thinking even in its own field.