True enough.

[ He leans back to look at the sky, hands behind his head. ]

I suppose we humans are an unimaginative bunch...Anything we can envision for the future is always rooted firmly in the past. We can never swear oaths to something truly new. If we swear to the future, we're swearing to the continuation of some grand pattern that's already started. Even the most progressive Counts are at some level truly conservative.