The sense of reality

"WHEN MEN, as occasionally happens, develop a distaste for the age in which they live, and love and admire some past period with such uncritical devotion that it is clear that, if they had their choice, they would wish to be alive then and not now - and when, as the next step, they seek to introduce into their lives certain of the habits and practices of the idealised past, and criticise the present for falling short of, or for degeneration from, this past - we tend to accuse them of nostalgic 'escapism', romantic antiquarianism, lack of realism; we dismiss their efforts as attempts to 'turn the clock back', to 'ignore the forces of history', or 'fly in the face of the facts', at best touching and childish and pathetic, at worst 'retrograde', or 'obstructive', or insanely 'fanatical', and, although doomed to failure in the end, capable of creating gratuitous obstacles to progress in the immediate present and future."