It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of the time. Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith that is in him. A clean slate is a wholly unsatisfactory foundation for a better world, and those who wish to free themselves from the past enslave themselves to the present. The heresies of present-mindedness are temporal provincialism and ethnocentrism.
Temporal provincialism is a vulgar conviction that current ways of doing things are normative.
It confers a timeless validity on transient contemporary taste. Unlike the present-mindedness of artists, philosophers, and scientists, which manipulates knowledge of the past in the interest of innovation, it is blinkered by ignorance. Knowledge of other cultures and of our own remoter past points up the relativity of the present, induces a healthy skepticism about current arrangements and achievements, and exposes the status quo to continuous critical reappraisal. Socializing the young, defining the roles of men and women, and preparing for death are permanent human problems. It is narrowing to imagine that our ways of meeting them are the only ones or the best.