“The last two centuries were familiar with the myth of progress. Our own century has adopted the myth of modernity. The one myth has replaced the other. … Men ceased to believe in progress; but only to pin their faith to more tangible realities, whose sole original significance had been that they were the instruments of progress. …This exaltation of the present … is a corollary of that very faith in progress which people claim to have discarded. The present is superior to the past, by definition, only in a mythology of progress. Thus one reatins the corollary while rejecting the principle. There is only one way of retaining a position of whose instability one is conscious. One must simply refrain from thinking—and surrender oneself to the vortex of the corollary.”

— Charles Baudouin

sections 1-7
The Myth of Modernity (1946)

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Charles Baudouin 4

French-Swiss psychoanalyst 1893–1963

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Context: Symbol and myth do bring into awareness infantile, archaic dreads and similar primitive psychic content. This is their regressive aspect. But they also bring out new meaning, new forms, and disclose a reality that was literally not present before, a reality that is not merely subjective but has a second pole which is outside ourselves. This is the progressive side of symbol and myth. This aspect points ahead. It is integrative. It is a progressive revealing of structure in our relation to nature and our own existence, as the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur so well states. It is a road to universals beyond discrete personal experience.

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As quoted in An Encyclopedia of Quotations About Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 69
Variant: The century of aeroplanes deserves its own music. As there are no precedents, I must create anew.