"We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us"
About this Quote
Addison punctures the piety of forward-looking virtue with a sly, almost petulant candor: if we are forever laboring for “posterity,” why does posterity get to be a one-way beneficiary? The line works because it takes a sanctified civic cliché and treats it like an uneven business arrangement. “Always” overstates just enough to implicate everyone - politicians fundraising on legacy, patrons endowing institutions, writers polishing their names for future syllabi. Then comes the twist: “I would fain,” an old-fashioned softener that makes the demand sound polite even as it smuggles in something subversive. He’s not raging; he’s smiling while he flips the moral ledger.
The subtext is both skeptical and self-aware. Addison is a professional maker of public-minded prose in an era when “improvement” and “virtue” were marketed as social goods. Early 18th-century Britain was building its modern institutions: party politics, a booming print culture, coffeehouse debate, financial speculation. Talk of posterity helped justify projects whose payoffs were abstract or deferred, and it flattered the present as enlightened. Addison’s quip calls out the vanity in that rhetoric: a lot of “for the future” is really “for my reputation.”
There’s also a human, surprisingly modern irritation here. We inherit language, laws, wealth, and disasters from the past, yet we’re told our job is to sacrifice forward. Addison doesn’t deny responsibility; he exposes the emotional bait-and-switch. Posterity is treated like a creditor we must pay, never a partner who might pay us back with gratitude, memory, or restraint. The joke lands because it’s true: legacy is often just ambition wearing a toga.
The subtext is both skeptical and self-aware. Addison is a professional maker of public-minded prose in an era when “improvement” and “virtue” were marketed as social goods. Early 18th-century Britain was building its modern institutions: party politics, a booming print culture, coffeehouse debate, financial speculation. Talk of posterity helped justify projects whose payoffs were abstract or deferred, and it flattered the present as enlightened. Addison’s quip calls out the vanity in that rhetoric: a lot of “for the future” is really “for my reputation.”
There’s also a human, surprisingly modern irritation here. We inherit language, laws, wealth, and disasters from the past, yet we’re told our job is to sacrifice forward. Addison doesn’t deny responsibility; he exposes the emotional bait-and-switch. Posterity is treated like a creditor we must pay, never a partner who might pay us back with gratitude, memory, or restraint. The joke lands because it’s true: legacy is often just ambition wearing a toga.
Quote Details
| Topic | Legacy & Remembrance |
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