The Conservative Mind, pp. 245-246

Opening Remarks
The physical mind, by its very nature is conservative. It is limited in its scope of understanding and action. It prefers stability over change. It lacks innovation and prefers to continue the old ways of life.

Loves the old ground
It loves the old ground that was its dwelling-place:
Abhorring change as an audacious sin,
Distrustful of each new discovery
Only it advances step by careful step
And fears as if a deadly abyss the unknown.

This early mind stays in its little comfort zone and is wary of any change. It runs in groves of habit and distrusts anything new, whether it be a new discovery or a new way of life. Its progress is slow as it fears the unknown and takes each step slowly, cautiously and carefully.

Safe foothold
A prudent treasurer of its ignorance,
It shrinks from adventure, blinks at glorious hope,
Preferring a safe foothold upon things
To the dangerous joy of wideness and of height.

This mind treasures its ignorance as if it is most useful and priceless thing in the world. Adventure it shrinks from and refuses to stake a claim for glory. Happy within its small and narrow fixed routine it prefers stable unchanging round of life, safe within its limits than try out the adventure and the dangerous joy of wideness and height.

Capital stock
The world’s slow impressions on its labouring mind,
Tardy imprints almost indelible,
Increase their value by their poverty;
The old sure memories are its capital stock:
Only what sense can grasp seems absolute:
External fact it figures as sole truth,
Wisdom identifies with the earthward look,
And things long known and actions always done
Are to its clinging hold a balustrade
Of safety on the perilous stair of Time.

Its labouring mind is slow in receiving new impressions. The tardy imprints it gathers over time are few and far between. These are its capital stock. What the senses can grasp and the outer appearances show is the only truth.

Established ancient ways
Heaven’s trust to it are the established ancient ways,
Immutable laws man has no right to change,
A sacred legacy from the great dead past
Or the one road that God has made for life,
A firm shape of Nature never to be changed,
Part of the huge routine of the universe.

It values tradition as something sacred which cannot be changed. Even though the flow of time carries humanity forward it refuses to follow the evolutionary flow. Narrow and dogmatic it believes in its own exclusive approach to God as the only true and valid one. Thus living in the past it resists the new and the unknown.

Closing Remarks
This traditional and conservative mind is found everywhere, from the religious fanatic to the dogmatic scientist. All fundamentalism and narrowness and rigidity of mind and thought are its products.