This is Tradition.
There are dead people who direct the course of our lives, today and in
the case of every young generation, and there are living people who the louder
they shout, the more clear it becomes that they are dead before their
time. This is Tradition: only those live
who are living, no matter though some of these have died years ago. Again, every young generation will direct the
life of that tradition; this too is traditional, and from this point of view,
what we call originality does not exist, except as an immature fantasy. Tradition alone exists fully; for tradition
is life- indeed, it is the higher stage of life which makes no distinction
between living and dead. Whenever we
possess true life, we possess tradition; we possess a tradition which is added
to, developed, enriched. The last become
first and the first last. Of those who
constitute tradition it could be said that they all belong to the present. Tradition is neither the past nor the future-
although it is more future than past, since it lives in the eternal present; and
this is tradition, a power that goes hand in hand with life. Life and tradition are one. In tradition, this moment is not merely this
moment, but all the past present within this moment, and perhaps part of the
future as well.
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