Chesterton's Gate: Is Folly an Hereditary Disease?

The following is a somewhat famous commentary from GKC that points out the incipient potential value of tradition. At minimum, it tells us why destruction requires careful consideration. To use another analogy, everything we think is bathwater may not be, after all. What a person needs is wisdom. "Grant it, Lord."

Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate [is] erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this, let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away.” Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there…. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings such as ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. 

G. K. Chesterton, The Thing (New York: Sheed & Ward, n.d.), 35.