DECISIONS OF PRINCIPLE

4.6.3 It may take several generations for this disease to play itself out. Morality
regains its vigour when ordinary people have learnt afresh to decide for
themselves what principles to live by, and more especially what principles to
teach their children. Since the world, though subject to vast material changes,
changes only very slowly in matters that are fundamental from the moral point
of view, the principles which win the acceptance of the mass of people are not
likely to differ enormously from those which their fathers came to distrust. The
moral principles of Aristotle resemble those of Aeschylus more than they differ
from them, and we ourselves shall perhaps come back to something
recognizably like the morality of our grandfathers. But there will be some
changes; some of the principles advocated by the rebels will have been adopted.
That is how morality progresses -- or retrogresses. The process is, as we shall see,
reflected by very subtle changes in the uses of value-words; the impossibility of
translating Aristotle's catalogue of virtues into modern English may serve as an
example, and the disappearance without I trace of the word 'righteous' may
serve as another.