Change is the law of life that is the only unchanging thing in Nature. Stagnation is death. Carlyle said, “Today is not yesterday; we ourselves change; how can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always, the same? Change, indeed, is painful, yet needful.” The idea of the Sanatan, of the unchangeable, is a figment of the fancy. That is the great lesson we learn from history. And yet man does not really learn the lesson. He dislikes change and likes to cling to the old order and to oppose the new. He is afraid of the need for making fresh adjustments, of moving out of the beaten track. Therefore, though change comes inevitably, it does not come easily, not without opposition. In most cases, this is simply the result of blind fear, a nervous dread of the unknown.
Tennyson, when he said that “the old order changeth, yielding place to new”, completed his statement by adding that even a good custom may corrupt the world. Just as the flowing water is wholesome, and stagnant water is poisonous, so it is with customs. Only when it flows through and alters with changes, it is able to refresh.
The conditions of the material world cannot and can never be made stationary. Unless man can change with changing environment, there is bound to be conflicts and mal-adjustments. Hence, human beings also must alter in order to be in harmony with a continuously changing material world. If this change be resisted, it leads to social disintegration and decay, Decadence in life and in literature is the direct result of this refusal to changing in conformity with time.
Change, therefore in response to changing material conditions of life is the root cause of all progress. If the wrong is to be righted, then the conditions responsible for the wrong must be altered in a suitable manner. We should have courage to believe that the world moves from beauty to good for all. That is the law of evolution.
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And so we must cultivate the sprit of optimism, a feeling of hope in the future that is to come. We must put over selves in harmony with the gigantic forces of evolution. We must give up the dread of an unknown future. Therefore, we should shun the attitude of conservatism. Let us not deny our superiority in knowledge and power over our ancestors; and let us also not be blind to the fact that our duty lies in smoothing the path of change in human affairs for the benefit of generations unborn.