The emphasis of conservatism is honoring what has been passed down as a source of wisdom that goes beyond what can be demonstrated or even explicitly stated. Thus, conservatism is a network of commonly accepted attitudes, beliefs and practices that has grown up through strengthening of things that have worked and rejection of things that have led to conflict and failure. It therefore comprises a collection of habits that have proved useful in a huge variety of practical affairs, and a comprehensive and generally coherent point of view that reflects very extensive experience and thought. Through it we know subtle and fundamental features of the world that would otherwise escape us, and our understanding of those things takes on concrete and usable form.

The usual alternative to reliance on tradition is reliance on theory. Taking theory literally can be costly because it achieves clarity by ignoring things that are difficult to articulate. Such things can be important; the reason politics and morals are learned mostly by experience and imitation is that most of what we need to know about them consists in habits, attitudes and im-plicit presumptions that we couldn't begin to put into words. There is no means other than tradition to accumulate, conserve and hang on such things.

Other considerations also support the wisdom of relying on tradition, if not specifically the wisdom of tradition itself. For example, tradition typically exists as the common property of a community whose members are raised in it. Accordingly, it normally unites more than divides, and is far more likely than theory to facilitate free and cooperative life in common.