They could not look steadily to a given end for an hour in their pre-historic state; and even now, when excited or when suddenly and wholly thrown out of their old grooves, they can scarcely do so.
He discusses the difficulties humans face in maintaining focus, linking it to their primitive past.
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Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.
At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.
But it is natural also that persons used to analyse political institutions should look at these anomalies with a little tenderness and a little interest.
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
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