Another defense of the Living Constitution is based in viewing the Constitution not merely as law but also as a source of foundational "concepts" for the governing of society. Of course, laws must be fixed and clear so that people can understand and abide by them on a daily basis. However, if the Constitution is more than a set of laws but also provides guiding concepts, which will in turn provide the foundations for laws, the costs and benefits of such an entirely-fixed meaning are very different. The reason is simple: if a society locks itself into a previous generation's interpretive ideas, it will wind up either constantly attempting to change the Constitution to reflect changes or simply scrapping the Constitution altogether. While the rights and powers provided in the Constitution remain, the scope that those rights and powers should account for society's present experiences. "Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote in 1914: 'Provisions of the Constitution of the United States are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form, but are organic living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is not to be gathered simply from the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.'"