154. The evolution of money. It is evident that money was developed out of trade by instinctive operations of interest, and that money existed long before the idea of it was formed. The separate operations were stimulated only by the most immediate and superficial desires, but they set supply and demand in motion and produced economic value thousands of years before any man conceived of value. The rational analysis of value and money is not yet satisfactorily made. There are, therefore, points of view in which money is the most marvelous product of the folkways. The unconsciousness of the operation and the secondary results of it are here in the strongest contrast. Inside of the we-group useful property was shared or exchanged in an infinite variety of ways, according to variations of circumstances. We cannot follow the customs which thence arose, because the phenomena have been reported to us without distinction between intragroup and intergroup transactions. We see groups of predominant wares set out in intergroup trade, and only slowly is a smaller number segregated to be the general terms of every trade. The inconvenience of barter was only slowly felt, and could not have been a motive until trade was customary and familiar. In intragroup exchanges the predominant ware was more easily differentiated. It was the thing greatly desired. Here the amulet-trophy-ornament was important for the elements of superstition, vanity, and magic which it bore. In intergroup trade the utility of the object predominated. It was sought in journeys only for its utility, and in that trade the transactions first became impersonal. In the selection of leading wares individuals could not experiment for their own risk. By taking what each wanted at a time selection at last resulted, and when we are told that a certain group uses this or that group of articles for money, we are told only what articles predominate in their desires or transactions; in other words, what stage in the selection of a money they have reached. It is evident that this entire operation was an impersonal and unregulated play of custom, which went through a long and varying evolution, but kept its authority all the time and at every stage. The persistence of the word "shilling" in our language is a striking proof of the power of custom—above all, popular custom—in connection with money. The metric system was invented to be a rational system, but the populace has insisted on dividing kilograms and liters into halves and quarters. Language, money, and weights and measures are things which show the power of popular custom more than any others. The selection of predominant wares reached its acme in the selection of one, not necessarily the commodity most desired, but, after the function of money is perceived, the one which performs it best. To return and take up a greater number is to go backward on the path of civilization.

155. The ethical functions of money. From shells to gold the ethics of social relations has clung to money. There is more pure plutocracy in Melanesia than in New York. The differentiation of men by wealth is greatly aided by money, because money adds immensely to the mobility of wealth and lets all forces reach their full effect in transactions. The social effect of debt is best seen in barbarous societies which have money. Debt and war together made slavery.[363] It is, however, an entire mistake to regard a money-system as in itself a mischief-working system. The effect of money is exhausted when we notice that it makes wealth mobile and lets forces work out their full result by removing friction. So soon as there is a money there is a chance for exchanges of money for goods and goods for money, also for the loan and repayment of money at different times, under which transactions interests may change and speculation can arise. These facts have always interested the ethical philosophers. "Naught hath grown current amongst mankind so mischievous as money. This brings cities to their fall. This drives men homeless, and moves honest minds to base contrivings. This hath taught mankind the use of villainies, and how to give an impious turn to every kind of act."[364] In such diatribes "money" stands for wealth in general. Money, properly speaking, has no more character than axes of stone, bronze, iron, or steel. It only does its own work impersonally and mechanically. The ethical functions and character ascribed to it are entirely false. There can be no such thing as "tainted money." Money bears no taint. It serves the murderer and the saint with equal indifference. It is a tool. It can be used one day for a crime, the next day for the most beneficent purpose. No use leaves any mark on it. The Solomon Islanders are expert merchants and "are fully the equal of white men in cheating."[365] They do it with shell money as whites do it with gold, silver, and banknotes. That is to say, the "money" is indifferent because it has no ethical function at all and absolutely no character.

156. There are other topics which might be brought under the struggle for existence as a cluster of folkways, with great advantage. The struggle for existence takes on many different forms and produces phenomena which are cases of folkways. It speedily develops industrial organization, which, in one point of view, is only the interaction of folkways. Weights and measures, the measurement of time, the communication of intelligence, and trade are primary folkways in their earliest forms and deserve careful study as such.

[165] Smyth, Aborig. of Victoria, I, 194, 197.

[166] Mason, Origin of Invention, 252.

[167] Tylor, Anthrop., 208.

[168] Powers, California Indians, 50.

[169] Lumholtz, Scribner's, October, 1894, 448.

[170] Von den Steinen, Berl. Mus., 1888, 205.

[171] Southey, Brazil, I, 131.

[172] E.g. a rasp made from the skin of the palate of a kind of ray, by Tahitians, Vienna Museum.

[173] Mason, Origin of Invention, 23.

[174] Grinnell, Folk Tales, 295.

[175] Dall, Bur. Eth., III, 122.

[176] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 52.

[177] Smyth, Aborig. of Victoria, I, 202.

[178] N. S. Amer. Anthrop., II, 466.

[179] U. S. Nat. Mus., 1890, 471.

[180] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 163.

[181] Smithson, Contrib. to Knowledge, XXV; Rau, Prehist. Fishing.

[182] Von den Steinen, Berl. Mus., 1888, 209, 231, 235.

[183] Ehrenreich, Voelkerkunde Brasiliens; Berl. Mus., 1891, 57.

[184] Prim. Inhab. of Scandinavia, 35.

[185] JAI, XXIII, 160.

[186] Ibid., XXVIII, 343.

[187] Kabary, Karolinenarchipel., 123-130.

[188] Hearn, Japan, 139.

[189] Ibid., 165.

[190] Smyth, Aborig. of Victoria, I, 340.

[191] Tylor, JAI, XXII, 137; JAI, XXIV, 336; Early Hist. of Mankind, 195; Ling Roth, Tasmania, 158.

[192] JAI, XXIII, 276.

[193] Bur. Eth., XVII (Part I), 153, 245.

[194] Ibid., XV, 61.

[195] Mason, Origin of Invention, 132.

[196] Ibid., 123, 136.

[197] Intern. Cong. Anthrop., 1893, 67.

[198] JAI, XXIV, 44.

[199] Ibid., X, 316.

[200] Mason, Origin of Invention, 148.

[201] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 586.

[202] Ranke, Der Mensch, II, 519.

[203] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 149.

[204] Hagen, Unter den Papuas, 214; Pfeil, Aus der Suedsee, 97.

[205] Thurston, Antiq. of Tenn., etc., 218, 230-240, 259; JAI, XIII, XVI; Bur. Ethnol., XIII; Smithson. Rep., 1874, 1877, 1886, Parts I, II, III; Peabody Mus., No. 7.

[206] Lubbock, Prehist. Times, 90.

[207] Smithson. Rep., 1885, Part I, 874, 882; Ibid., 1887, Part I, 601.

[208] Smyth, Aborig. of Victoria, I, 359.

[209] Globus, LXXXVII, 238.

[210] Ranke, Der Mensch, II, 517.

[211] Mason, Origin of Invention, 26.

[212] U. S. Nat. Mus., 1894, 658.

[213] Powers, Calif. Indians, 374.

[214] Ibid., 104; Smithson. Rep., 1886, Part I, 225.

[215] Smithson. Rep., 1887, Part I, 601.

[216] Bur. Eth., XII, 561.

[217] Smithson. Rep., 1885, Part II, 743.

[218] Scient. Amer., March 10, 1906.

[219] Vor Oldtid, 169.

[220] Aarboger f. Oldkyndighed, 1891.

[221] L'Anthropologie, XIV, 417.

[222] JAI, XXVIII, 296; Bur. Ethnol., II, 205; Horn, Mennesket i den forhistoriske Tid, 168.

[223] Globus, LXXVI, 79.

[224] Von den Steinen, Berl. Mus., 1888, 203.

[225] Schomburgk, Britisch Guiana, I, 424.

[226] Howitt, S. E. Australians, 455.

[227] Kulturgesch., I, 289.

[228] Umschau, VII, 184.

[229] JAI, XXVIII, 108.

[230] Bur. Ethnol., XVII, Part I, 152.

[231] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 405.

[232] Boggiani, I Caduvei, I, 168.

[233] Gumplowicz, Sociol. und Politik, 93.

[234] Whitney, Language and the Study of Language, 37, 40.

[235] Mauthner, Kritik der Sprache, III, 2.

[236] Ibid., II, 403.

[237] Ibid., II, 426, 427.

[238] Mauthner, 278.

[239] Ibid., 186.

[240] Ibid., 184.

[241] Globus, LXXXVII, 397.

[242] Language, 48, 51.

[243] Whitney, Language, 46.

[244] Ibid., 44.

[245] Ibid., 23.

[246] Ibid., 14.

[247] Schultze, Psychologie der Naturvoelker, 96.

[248] Schultze, 86.

[249] Ibid., 89; Am Urquell, II, 22, 48.

[250] Schultze, 91.

[251] Ibid., 99.

[252] Lefevre, Race and Language, 3.

[253] Ibid., 27.

[254] Lefevre, 42.

[255] Mauthner, II, 468.

[256] Darwin, Descent of Man, 53.

[257] JAI, XXIV, 234.

[258] Martius, Ethnog. Bras., 106.

[259] Ibid., 704.

[260] Ehrenreich, Berl. Mus. (1891), II, 9.

[261] Schomburgk, Brit. Guiana, I, 227.

[262] Caroline Isl., 175.

[263] Spix and Martius, Brasilien, 927.

[264] JAI, XI, 41.

[265] Bur. Ethnol., VII, 44.

[266] PSM, XLIV, 81.

[267] JAI, XXIV, 393.

[268] Ethnology, 202.

[269] Sieben Jahre in Sued-Afrika, II, 173.

[270] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 230.

[271] Krieger, New Guinea, 208.

[272] Am Urquell, II, 22, 48.

[273] Schultze, Psychol. d. Naturvoelker, 93.

[274] Whitney, Language, 28.

[275] Schurz, Entstehungsgesch. des Geldes, Deutsch. Geogr. Blaetter, XX, 22.

[276] JAI, XIII, 245.

[277] JASB, I, 390.

[278] Amer. Anthrop., IX, 192.

[279] Scribner's, September, 1894, 298.

[280] Ling Roth, Sarawak, II, 231.

[281] Ridgeway, Origin of Currency and Weight Standards, 166.

[282] Ridgeway, 27.

[283] Evans, Ancient British Coins.

[284] Semper, Palau Ins., 61.

[285] Schurz, 3.

[286] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afrikas, I, 317; Vannutelli e Citerni, L'Omo, 463.

[287] Paulitschke, I, 318, 320.

[288] Across Africa, 176.

[289] Zay, Hist. Monetaire des Colon. Franc., 249.

[290] Ibid., 246.

[291] Kingsley, West African Studies, 82.

[292] Schurz, Entstehungsgesch. des Geldes, Deutsch. Geogr. Blaetter, XX, 14.

[293] Anthropologie (1900), XI, 677, 680.

[294] Globus, LXXXI, 12.

[295] Schurz, Entstehungsgesch. des Geldes, 38.

[296] Ibid., 25.

[297] Schurz, 22.

[298] Foureau, D'Alger au Congo, 539.

[299] Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, 59.

[300] Globus, LXXVIII, 203; Ibid., LXXXII, 243.

[301] Peel, Somaliland, 102.

[302] Junker, Afrika, III, 52; Ibid., I, 341.

[303] Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, I, 502.

[304] Junker, II, 245; Ibid., I, 295.

[305] Junker, I, 415.

[306] von Goetzen, Durch Afr., 339.

[307] Schurz, 28; Volkens, Kilimanjaro, 221.

[308] Schurz, 17.

[309] Meltzer, Carthage, II, 106.

[310] Schurz, 19.

[311] Codrington, Melanesians, 323.

[312] Amer. Anthrop., XI, 285.

[313] Marco Polo, II, 18.

[314] JAI, XII, 373.

[315] Ibid., 339.

[316] Indian Archipelago, 280.

[317] Sarawak, II, 234.

[318] Schurz, 13.

[319] Woodford, Naturalist amongst Head-Hunters, 16.

[320] Cayley-Webster, New Guinea and Cannibal Countries, 93.

[321] Parkinson, Ethnog. d. Nordwestl. Salomo Ins., 22.

[322] JAI, XVII, 314, 316.

[323] JAI, XXVIII. 164.

[324] JAI, X, 287.

[325] Kubary, Karolinenarchipel., 2.

[326] Semper, Palau Inseln, 167.

[327] Caroline Isl., 259.

[328] Kubary, Karolinenarchipel.

[329] Christian, Caroline Isl., 237.

[330] Die Soc. Einrichtungen d. Pelauer.

[331] Pfeil, Aus der Suedsee, 112.

[332] Semper, Palau Ins., 118.

[333] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 91.

[334] Ibid., 402.

[335] Powers, Calif. Indians, 335.

[336] Ibid., 76, 79.

[337] Smithson. Rep., 1886, Part I, 232.

[338] Bur. Eth., XVIII, Part I, 232.

[339] Smithson. Rep., 1887, Part I, 647.

[340] Powers, 21.

[341] Schurz, 25.

[342] Jolly, Recht und Sitte, 96.

[343] JASB, II, 214.

[344] Ridgeway, 21.

[345] Vissering, Chinese Currency.

[346] Ridgeway, 156.

[347] Puini, Le Origine della Civilta, 64; Century Dict., s.v. "Knife-money."

[348] Vissering, Chinese Currency, 38.

[349] U. S. Nat. Mus., 1893, 723.

[350] First Journey (Germ.), 61.

[351] Globus, LXXVI, 372.

[352] Exod. xxii. 16; xxi. 36.

[353] Deut. xiv. 24.

[354] Levit. xxvii. 13, 15, 19.

[355] Buhl, Soc. Verhaelt. der Isr., 95.

[356] Ridgeway, Origin of Currency and Weight Standards, 36.

[357] Ridgeway, 3.

[358] Schurz, 15.

[359] Babelon, Origines de la Monnaie, 72.

[360] Schrader, Prehist. Antiq. of Aryans, 153; Ridgeway, 31.

[361] Weinhold, D. F., II, 52.

[362] Geijer, Sveriges Historie, I, 327; Sophus Mueller, Vor Oldtid, 409.

[363] See Chapter VI.

[364] Sophokles, Antigone, 292 (Campbell's trans.).

[365] JAI, XXVI, 405.



CHAPTER IV

LABOR, WEALTH

Introduction.—Notions of labor.—Classical and mediaeval notions.—Labor has always existed.—Modern view of labor.— Movable capital in modern society; conditions of equality; present temporary status of the demand for men.—Effect of the facility of winning wealth.—Chances of acquiring wealth in modern times; effect on modern mores; speculation involved in any change.—Mores conform to changes in life conditions; great principles; their value and fate.—The French revolution.— Ruling classes; special privileges; corruption of the mores.— The standard of living.

157. The topics treated in Chapter III—tools, language, and money—belong almost entirely in the folkways. The element of esteem for tools is sometimes very great. They are made divine and receive worship. Nevertheless, there is little reflection stimulated to produce a sense of their importance to welfare. Therefore the moral element pertaining to the mores is not prominent in them. When the moral element exists at all in regard to tools, language, or money, it is independent and rises to the conception of prosperity, its sense and conditions. There are notions at all stages of civilization about productive labor and wealth, as parts of the fate of man on earth and of the conditions of his happiness and welfare. At this point they take the character of a philosophy, and are turned back on the work, as regulative notions of how, and how much, to work. The mores of the struggle for existence are in those notions. From the time when men had any accumulated wealth they seem to have been struck by its effect on the character of the possessor. The creature seemed to be stronger than the creator. Here ethical reflections began. They have been more actively produced since it has been possible for men to acquire wealth in a lifetime by their own efforts. Envy has been awakened, and has been gratified by theoretical discussions of the power, rights, and duties of wealth. When wealth was due to the possession of land or to the possession of rank and political power, the facts about its distribution seemed to be like the differences in health, strength, beauty, etc. It now appears that the ethics of poverty are as well worth studying as those of wealth, and that, in short, every man's case brings its own ethics, or that there are no ethics at all in the matter. The ideas, however, which are current in the society at the time are conditions for the individual, and they are a part of the mores of the environment in which the struggle for existence must be carried on.

158. Notions of labor. Nature peoples generally regard productive labor as the business of women, unworthy of men. The Jews believed in a God who worked six days and rested on the seventh. He differed from the Olympian gods of Greece, who were revelers, and from Buddha who tried to do nothing, or from Brahma who was only Thought. The Sabbath of rest implied other days of labor. In the book of Proverbs idleness is denounced as the cause of poverty and want.[366] Many passages are cited from the rabbinical literature in honor of productive labor and in disapproval of idleness.[367] In Book II, Chapter 62, of the Apostolic Constitutions, the basis of which is a Jewish work, it is taught that gainful occupations should be incidental and that the worship of God should be the main work of life. Hellenic shows and theaters are to be avoided. To this the Christian editor added heathen shows and sports of any kind. Young men ought to work to earn their own support. The Zoroastrian religion was a developed form of the strife between good forces and evil forces. The good men must enlist on the side of the good forces. This religion especially approved all the economic virtues, and productive efforts, like the clearing of waste land, or other labor to increase favorable conditions and to overcome harmful or obstructive influences, were religious, and were counted as help to the good forces.

159. Classical and mediaeval notions of labor. The Greeks and Romans regarded all labor for gain as degrading. The Greeks seem to have reached this opinion through a great esteem for intellectual pursuits, which they thought means of cultivation. The gainful occupations, or any occupations pursued for gain, were "banausic," which meant that they had an effect opposite to that of cultivation. The Romans seem to have adopted the Greek view, but they were prepared for it by militarism. The Middle Ages got the notion of labor from the Roman tradition. They mixed this with the biblical view. Labor was a necessity, as a consequence and penalty of sin, and directly connected, as a curse, with the "Fall." It was correlative to a curse on the ground, by which, also as a curse for sin, it was made hard to win subsistence by agriculture. The mediaeval philosophers, being clerics, held a life of contemplation to be far superior to one of labor or fighting. Labor was at best an evil necessity, a hardship, a symptom of the case of man, alienated from God and toiling to get back, if there was a way to get back, to the kingdom of God. The church offered a way to get back, namely, by sacraments, devotion, ritual, etc., that is, by a technically religious life, which could be lived successfully only if practiced exclusively. It occupied all the time of the "religious," technically so called. Labor was used for penance and for ascetic purposes. Often it was employed for useful results and with beneficial effect on useful arts. The purpose, however, was to ward off the vices of leisure. The ascetic temper and taste made labor sweet, so long as asceticism ruled the mores of the age.[368] Labor for economic production was not appreciated by the church. The production of wealth was not a religious purpose. It was even discouraged, since disapproval of wealth and luxury was one of the deep controlling principles of mediaeval Christianity. The unreality of mediaeval world philosophy appeared most distinctly in the views of marriage and labor, the two chief interests of everyday life. Marriage was a concession, a compromise with human weakness. There was something better, viz. celibacy. Labor was a base necessity. Contemplation was better.

160. Labor has always existed. Wealth became possible. Land. In all these cases the view of labor was dogmatic. It was enjoined by religion. There was some sense and truth in each view, but each was incomplete. The pursuit of gainful effort is as old as the existence of man on earth. The development of trade and transportation, slavery, political security, and the invention of money and credit are steps in it which have made possible large operations, great gains, and wealth. Some men have seized these chances and have made a powerful class. Rulers, chiefs, and medicine men have observed this power which might either enhance or supplant their own, and have sought to win it. In all primitive agricultural societies land is the only possession which can yield a large annual revenue for comfort and power. The mediaeval people of all classes got as much of it as they could. It would be very difficult indeed to mention any time when there were no rich men, and still harder to mention a time when the power of wealth was not admired and envied, and given its sway (sec. 150). Thus the religions and philosophies may have preached various doctrines about wealth, and may have found obedience, but the production of wealth, the love of wealth, and the power of wealth have run through all human history. The religions and philosophies have not lacked their effect, but they have always had to compromise with facts, just as we see them do to-day. The compromise has been in the mores. In so far as it was imperfect and only partly effected there have been contradictions in the mores. Such was the case in the Middle Ages. Wealth had great power. It at last won the day. In the fifteenth century all wanted it, and were ready to do anything to get it. Venality became the leading trait of the mores of the age. It affected the interpretation of the traditional doctrines of labor, wealth, the highest good, and of virtue, so that men of high purpose and honest hearts were carried away while professing disregard of wealth and luxury.

161. Modern view of labor. It is only in the most recent times, and imperfectly as yet, that labor has been recognized as a blessing, or, at worst, as a necessity which has great moral and social compensations, and which, if rightly understood and wisely used, brings joy and satisfaction. This can only be true, however, when labor is crowned by achievement, and that is when it is productive of wealth. Labor for the sake of labor is sport. It has its limits, and lies outside of the struggle for existence, which is real, and is not play. Labor in the struggle for existence is irksome and painful, and is never happy or reasonably attractive except when it produces results. To glorify labor and decry wealth is to multiply absurdities. The modern man is set in a new dilemma. The father labors, wins, and saves that his son may have wealth and leisure. Only too often the son finds his inheritance a curse. Where is the error? Shall the fathers renounce their labors?

162. Movable capital in modern society. Conditions of equality. Present temporary status of the demand for men. In modern times movable capital has been immensely developed and even fixed capital has been made mobile by the joint-stock device. It has disputed and largely defeated the social power of land property. It has become the social power. While land owners possessed the great social advantage, they could form a class of hereditary nobles. The nobles now disappear because their social advantage is gone. The modern financiers, masters of industry, merchants, and transporters now hold control of movable capital. They hold social and political power. They have not yet formed a caste of nobles, but they may do so. They may, by intermarriages, absorb the remnants of the old nobility and limit their marriages further to their own set. It is thus that classes form and reform, as new groups in the society get possession of new elements of social power, because power produces results. The dogmas of philosophers deal with what ought to be. What is and shall be is determined by the forces at work. No forces appear which make men equal. Temporary conditions occur under which no forces are at work which any one can seize upon. Then no superiority tells, and all are approximately equal. Such conditions exist in a new colony or state, or whenever the ratio of population to land is small. If we take into account the reflex effect of the new countries on Europe, it is easy to see that the whole civilized world has been under these conditions for the last two hundred or three hundred years. The effect of the creation of an immense stock of movable capital, of the opportunities in commerce and industry offered to men of talent, of the immense aid of science to industry, of the opening of new continents and the peopling of them by the poorest and worst in Europe, has been to produce modern mores. All our popular faiths, hopes, enjoyments, and powers are due to these great changes in the conditions of life. The new status makes us believe in all kinds of rosy doctrines about human welfare, and about the struggle for existence and the competition of life; it also gives us all our contempt for old-fashioned kings and nobles, creates democracies, and brings forth new social classes and gives them power. For the time being things are so turned about that numbers are a source of power. Men are in demand, and an increase in their number increases their value. Why then should we not join in dithyrambic oratory, and set all our mores to optimism? The reason is because the existing status is temporary and the conditions in it are evanescent. That men should be in demand on the earth is a temporary and passing status of the conjuncture which makes things now true which in a wider view are delusive. These facts, however, will not arrest the optimism, the self-confidence, the joy in life, and the eagerness for the future, of the masses of to-day.

163. Effect of the facility of winning wealth. All the changes in conditions of life in the last four hundred years have refashioned the mores and given modern society new ideas, standards, codes, philosophies, and religions. Nothing acts more directly on the mores than the facility with which great numbers of people can accumulate wealth by industry. If it is difficult to do so, classes become fixed and stable. Then there will be an old and stiff aristocracy which will tolerate no upstarts, and other classes will settle into established gradations of dependence. The old Russian boyars were an example of such an aristocracy. Certain mediaeval cities ran into this form. In it the mores of conservatism are developed,—unchangeable manners, fixed usages and ideas, unenlightenment, refusal of new ideas, subserviency of the lower classes, and sycophancy. The government is suspicious and cruel. If it is easily possible to gain wealth, a class of upstart rich men arises who, in a few years, must be recognized by the aristocracy, because they possess financial power and are needed. Struggles and civil wars may occur, as in the Italian cities, during this change, and the old aristocracy may long hold aloof from the new. In time, the new men win their way. The history of every state in Europe proves it. Old fortunes decay and old families die out. The result is inevitable. Laws and institutions cannot prevent it. Certain mores may have been recognized as aristocratic and there may be lamentations over their decline. They are poetic, romantic, and adventurous. Therefore they call out regret for their loss from those who do not think what would come back with them if they were recalled. Ethical philosophers may see ample reason to doubt the benefit of new mores and the vulgarization of everything. Society cannot stand still, and its movement will run the course set by the forces which produce it. It must be accepted and profit must be drawn from it, as best possible.

164. Chances of acquiring wealth in modern times; effect on modern mores; speculation involved in any change. The effect of the opening of new continents, the application of new inventions, and the expansion of commerce has been to make it easy for men with suitable talent to increase wealth. These changes have cheapened all luxuries, that is, have reduced them to common necessities. They have made land easily accessible to all, even the poorest, in the new countries, while lowering rent in old countries. They have raised wages and raised the standard of living and comfort. They have lessened the competition of life throughout civilized nations, and have made the struggle for existence far less severe. It is the changes in life conditions which have made slavery impossible and extended humanitarian sympathy. They have lessened social differentiation (that is, they have democratized), and they have intensified the industrial organization. In detail, and for individuals, this has often caused hardship. For the petty professional and semiprofessional classes it has been made harder to keep up the externals of a certain social position. For those classes the standard of living has risen faster than steam has cheapened luxuries. Discontent, anxiety, care for appearances, desire to impose by display, envy, and mean social ambition characterize the mores, together with energy and enterprise. Envy and discontent are amongst the very strongest traits of modern society. Very often they are only manifestations of irritated vanity. It is in the nature of things that classes of men and forms of property shall go through endless vicissitudes of advantage and disadvantage. Nobody can foresee these and speculate upon them with success. When it is proposed to "reorganize society" on any socialistic theory, or on no theory, it should be noticed that such an enterprise involves a blind speculation on the vicissitudes of classes and forms of property in the future. "Wealth, whether in land or money, has been increased by marriages and inheritances, reduced to fragments by divisions, even in noble families [in spite of settlements and entails], dissipated by prodigals, reconstituted by men of economical habits, centupled by industrious and competent men of enterprise, scattered by the indolent, the unfortunate, and the men of bad judgment, who have risked it unwisely. Political events have affected it as well as the favor of princes, advantageous offices in the state, popular revolts, wars, confiscations, from the abolition of serfdom in the fourteenth century until the abolition, in 1790, of the dues known as feudal, although they were, for the most part, owned by members of the bourgeoisie."[369] So it will be in the future, in spite of all that men can do. If two men had the same sum of money in 1200, and one bought land while the other became a money lender, anywhere in western Europe, the former would to-day be more or less rich according to the position of his land. He might be a great millionaire. The other would have scarcely anything left.[370] Shall we then all buy land now? Let those do so who can foresee the course of values in the next seven hundred years. The popular notion is that nobles have always owned land. The truth is that men who have acquired wealth have bought land and got themselves ennobled. In France, "in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nineteen twentieths of those who were called nobles were middle-class men enriched, decorated, and possessed of land."[371] The middle class in western Europe has been formed out of the labor class within seven hundred years. The whole middle class, therefore, represents the successful rise of the serfs, but, since a labor class still remains, it is asserted that there has been no change. On the other hand, there has been a movement of nobles and middle-class grandees downward into the labor class and the proletariat. It was said, a few years ago, that a Plantagenet was a butcher in a suburb of London. It is also asserted that representatives of great mediaeval families are now to be found as small farmers, farm laborers, or tramps in modern England.[372]

165. Mores conform to changes in life conditions; great principles; their value and fate. For our purpose it suffices here to notice how the mores have followed the changes in life conditions, how they have reacted on the current faiths and philosophies, and how they have produced ethical notions to justify the mores themselves. They have produced notions of natural rights and of political philosophy to support the new institutions. There are thousands in the United States who believe that every adult male has a natural right to vote, and that the vote makes the citizen. The doctrine of natural rights has received some judicial recognition, and it has been more or less accepted and applied in the constitutions of various states which were established in the nineteenth century. The American doctrines of 1776 and the French doctrines of 1789 are carried on and used in stump oratory until they get in the way of some new popular purpose, but what produced both was the fact that some new classes had won wealth and economic power and they wanted political recognition. To get it they had to invent some new "great principles" to justify their revolt against tradition. That is the way in which all "great principles" are produced. They are always made for an exigency. Their usefulness passes with the occasion. The mores are forever adjusting efforts to circumstances. Sooner or later they need new great principles. Then they obliterate the old ones. The old jingle of words no longer wins a response. The doctrine is dead. In 1776 it seemed to every Whig in America that it was a pure axiom to say that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. They clung to this as a sacred dogma for over a hundred years, because it did not affect unfavorably any interest. It is untrue. Governments get their powers from the historical fact of their existence. They are all ephemeral, subject to change. When a change takes place it is controlled by the ideas and interests of the time of change, when the popular element in self-government may be much greater than when the constitution was last previously established. In 1898 the popular will, in the United States, was to take possession of the Philippine Islands and to become rulers there, not ruled, as the fathers were in the colonies of 1776. The great doctrine of the source of due power was quickly trampled under foot. The same fate awaits all the rest of the "great principles." The doctrine that all men are equal is being gradually dropped, from its inherent absurdity, and we may at any time find it expedient to drop the jingle about a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was only good historically to destroy the doctrine, "Everything for the people; nothing by them."

166. The French Revolution. The French Revolution was due to the fact that a great change had come about in the distribution of economic power between classes and in the class mores which correspond to economic power. All the political institutions of a modern state are conservative in the sense that they retain and sustain what is and has been, and resist interference or change. The historical picture is often such that abuses are maintained and reform seems hopeless, on account of the power of existing institutions and customs and the depth of convictions of social welfare which have become traditional. The student of the history is led to believe that any reform or revolution, as a dissolution of the inherited system of repression and retention, is worth all that it may cost. Hence some students of history become believers in "revolution" as a beneficent social force or engine. In the case of the French Revolution, the passions which were set loose destroyed the whole social order, swept away all the institutions, and even destroyed all the inherited mores. It is evident that this last is what the revolutionists finally aimed at. The ancien regime came to mean the whole fabric of the old society, with its codes, standards, and ideas of right, wrong, the desirable, etc. The revolutionists also undertook to invent new mores, that is, new codes and standards, new conceptions of things socially desirable, a new religion, and new notions of civil duty and responsibility. During the Directory and the Consulate there was a gulf between the ancient and the new in which there was anarchy of the mores, even after the civil machinery was repaired and set in operation again. Napoleon brought back institutions and forms of social order so far as seemed desirable for his own interest. The historical continuity was broken and has remained so. Of the ancien regime there can be found to-day only ruins and relics. Nevertheless, the ancient mores of social faith and morality, of social well living, of religious duty and family virtue, are substantially what they were before the great explosion. This is the last and greatest lesson of the revolution: it is impossible to abolish the mores and to replace them by new ones rationally invented. To change a monarchy into a republic is trifling. Individuals and classes can be guillotined. Institutions can be overturned. Religion can be abolished or put out of fashion. The mores are in the habits of the people, and are needed and practiced every day. The revolutionists ordered changes in the social ritual, and they brought about a disuse of "monsieur" and "madame." All their innovations in the ritual have fallen into disuse, and the old fashions have returned, in obedience to common sense. The new classes have not enjoyed their victory over the old as to courtesy, social comity, and civil good-fellowship. They have abandoned it, and have recognized the fact that the old aristocracy had well solved all matters of this kind. As wealth has increased and artisans and peasants have gained new powers of production and acquisition, they have learned to laugh at the civil philosophy and enthusiasm of the eighteenth-century philosophers, and have ordered their lives, as far as possible or convenient, on the old aristocratic models. Sansculottism is inconsistent with respect for productive labor, or with the accumulation of wealth. No one who can earn great wages or who possesses wealth will, out of zeal for philosophical doctrines, prefer to live in squalor and want. The relation of modern mores to new feelings in respect to labor and trade, and to the accumulation of wealth, are to be easily perceived from the course of modern revolutions.

167. Ruling classes. Special privileges. Corruption of the mores. In every societal system or order there must be a ruling class or classes; in other words, a class gets control of any society and determines its political form or system. The ruling class, therefore, has the power. Will it not use the power to divert social effort to its own service and gain? It must be expected to do so, unless it is checked by institutions which call into action opposing interests and forces. There is no class which can be trusted to rule society with due justice to all, not abusing its power for its own interest. The task of constitutional government is to devise institutions which shall come into play at the critical periods to prevent the abusive control of the powers of a state by the controlling classes in it. The ruling classes in mediaeval society were warriors and ecclesiastics, and they used all their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of other classes. Modern society is ruled by the middle class. In honor of the bourgeoisie it must be said that they have invented institutions of civil liberty which secure to all safety of person and property. They have not, therefore, made a state for themselves alone or chiefly, and their state is the only one in which no class has had to fear oppressive use of political power. The history of the nineteenth century, however, plainly showed the power of capital in the modern state. Special legislation, charters, and franchises proved to be easy legislative means of using the powers of the state for the pecuniary benefit of the few. In the first half of the century, in the United States, banks of issue were used to an extravagant pitch for private interest. The history is disgraceful, and it is a permanent degradation of popular government that power could not be found, or did not exist, in the system to subjugate this abuse and repress this corruption of state power. The protective-tariff system is simply an elaborate system by which certain interests inside of a country get control of legislation in order to tax their fellow-citizens for their own benefit. Some of the victims claim to be taken "into the steal," and if they can make enough trouble for the clique in power, they can force their own admission. That only teaches all that the great way to succeed in the pursuit of wealth is to organize a steal of some kind and get inside of it. The pension system in the United States is an abuse which has escaped from control. There is no longer any attempt to cope with it. It is the share of the "common man" in the great system of public plunder. "Graft" is only a proof of the wide extent to which this lesson to get into the steal is learned. It only shows that the corrupt use of legislation and political power has affected the mores. Every one must have his little sphere of plunder and especial advantage. This conviction and taste becomes so current that it affects all new legislation. The legislators do not doubt that it is reasonable and right to enact laws which provide favor for special interests, or to practice legislative strikes on insurance companies, railroads, telephone companies, etc. They laugh at remonstrance as out of date and "unpractical." The administrators of life-insurance companies, savings banks, trusts, etc., proceed on the belief that men in positions of power and control will use their positions for their own advantage. They think that that is only common sense. "What else are we here for?" It is the supreme test of a system of government whether its machinery is adequate for repressing the selfish undertakings of cliques formed on special interests and saving the public from raids of plunderers. The modern democratic states fail under this test. There is not a great state in the world which was not democratized in the nineteenth century. There is not one of them which did not have great financial scandals before the century closed. Financial scandal is the curse of all the modern parliamentary states with a wide suffrage. They give liberty and security, with open chances for individual enterprise, from which results great individual satisfaction and happiness, but the political machinery offers opportunities for manipulation and corrupt abuse. They educate their citizens to seek advantages in the industrial organization by legislative devices, and to use them to the uttermost. The effect is seen in the mores. We hear of plutocracy and tainted money, of the power of wealth, and the wickedness of corporations. The disease is less specific. It is constitutional. The critics are as subject to it as the criticised. A disease of the mores is a disease of public opinion as to standards, codes, ideas of truth and right, and of things worth working for and means of success. Such a disease affects everybody. It penetrates and spoils every institution. It spreads from generation to generation, and at last it destroys in the masses the power of ethical judgment.

168. The standard of living. One of the purest of all the products of current mores is the standard of living. It belongs to a subgroup and is a product of the mores of a subgroup. It has been called a psychological or ethical product, which view plainly is due to an imperfect analysis or classification. The standard of living is the measure of decency and suitability in material comfort (diet, dress, dwelling, etc.) which is traditional and habitual in a subgroup. It is often wise and necessary to disregard the social standard of comfort, because it imposes foolish expenses and contemptible ostentation, but it is very difficult to disregard the social standard of comfort. The standard is upheld by fear of social disapproval, if one derogates from class "respectability." The disapproval or contempt of one's nearest associates is the sanction. The standards and code of respectability are in the class mores. They get inside of the mind and heart of members of the class, and betray each to the class demands.

169. If, however, the standard of living which one has inherited from his class is adopted as an individual standard, and is made the object of effort and self-denial, the individual and social results are of high value. One man said, "Live like a hog and you will behave like one"; to which another replied, "Behave like a hog and you will live like one." Both were right in about equal measure. The social standard of a class acts like honor. It sustains self-respect and duty to self and family. The pain which is produced by derogation produces effort and self-denial. The social standard may well call out and concentrate all there is in a man to work for his social welfare. Evidently the standard of living never can do more than that. It never can add anything to the forces in a man's own character and attainments.

[366] Prov. xxiv. 30.

[367] Jewish Encyc., s.v. "Labor." The same view is found in 2 Thess. iii. 10, and Eph. iv. 28.

[368] Thomas Aquinas, Summa, II, 2, qu. 82, 1, 2; qu. 187, 3.

[369] D'Avenel, Hist. Econ., 142.

[370] D'Avenel, 397.

[371] D'Avenel, 144.

[372] Hardy used this fact in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.



CHAPTER V

SOCIETAL SELECTION

Social selection by the mores.—Instrumentalities of suggestion.—Symbols, pictures, etc.—Apparatus of suggestion.—Watchwords, catchwords.—"Slave," "democracy."— Epithets.—Phrases.—Pathos.—Pathos is unfavorable to truth.—Analysis and verification as tests.—Humanity.— Selection by distinction.—Aristocracies.—Fashion.— Conventionalization.—Uncivilized fashions.—Ideals of beauty.—Fashion in other things than dress.—Miscellaneous fashions.—All deformations by fashion are irrational.—Satires on fashion.—Fashion in faiths and ideals.—Fashion is not trivial, not subject to argument.—Remoter effects of fashion.— Slang and expletives.—Poses, fads, and cant.—Illustrations.— Heroes, scapegoats, and butts.—Caricature.—Relation of fads, etc., to mores.—Ideals.—Ideals of beauty.—The man-as-he-should-be.—The standard type of man.—Who does the thinking?—The gentleman.—Standards set by taboos.—Crimes.— Criminal law.—Mass phenomena of fear and hope.—Manias, delusions.—Monstrous mass phenomena.—Gregariousness in the Middle Ages.—The mendicant orders.—Other mendicants.— Popular mania for poverty and beggary.—Delusions.—Manias and suggestion.—Power of the crowd over the individual.— Discipline by pain.—The mediaeval church operated societal selection.—The mediaeval church.—Sacerdotal celibacy.—The masses wanted clerical celibacy.—Abelard.—The selection of sacerdotal celibacy.—How the church operated selection.—Mores and morals; social code.—Orthodoxy; treatment of dissent; selection by torture.—Execution by burning.—Burning in North American colonies.—Solidarity in penalty for fault of one.— Torture in the ancient states.—Torture in the Roman empire.— Jewish and Christian universality; who persecutes whom?—The ordeal.—Irrationality of torture.—Inquisitorial procedure from Roman law.—Bishops as inquisitors.—Definition of heretic.—The Albigenses.—Persecution was popular.—Theory of persecution.—Duties laid on the civil authority.—Public opinion as to the burning of heretics.—The shares of the church and the masses.—The church uses its power for selfish aggrandizement.—The inquisition took shape slowly.—Frederick II and his code.—Formative legislation.—Dungeons.—The yellow crosses.—Confiscation.—Operation of the inquisition.— Success of the inquisition.—Torture in civil and ecclesiastical trials.—The selection accomplished.—Torture in England.—The Spanish inquisition.—The inquisition in Venice.—The use of the inquisition for political and personal purposes.—Stages of the selection by murder.

170. Social selection by the mores. The most important fact about the mores is their dominion over the individual. Arising he knows not whence or how, they meet his opening mind in earliest childhood, give him his outfit of ideas, faiths, and tastes, and lead him into prescribed mental processes. They bring to him codes of action, standards, and rules of ethics. They have a model of the man-as-he-should-be to which they mold him, in spite of himself and without his knowledge. If he submits and consents, he is taken up and may attain great social success. If he resists and dissents, he is thrown out and may be trodden under foot. The mores are therefore an engine of social selection. Their coercion of the individual is the mode in which they operate the selection, and the details of the process deserve study. Some folkways exercise an unknown and unintelligent selection. Infanticide does this (Chapter VII). Slavery always exerts a very powerful selection, both physical and social (Chapter VI).

171. Instrumentalities of suggestion. Suggestion is exerted in the mores by a number of instrumentalities, all of which have their origin in the mores, and may only extend to all what some have thought and felt, or may (at a later stage) be used with set intention to act suggestively in extending certain mores.

Myths, legends, fables, and mythology spread notions through a group, and from generation to generation, until the notions become components of the mores, being interwoven with the folkways. Epic poems have powerfully influenced the mores. They present types of heroic actions and character which serve as models to the young. The Iliad and Odyssey became text-books for the instruction of Greek youth. They set notions of heroism and duty, and furnished all Greeks with a common stock of narratives, ideas, and ideals, and with sentiments which everybody knew and which could be rearoused by an allusion. Everybody was expected to produce the same reaction under the allusion. Perhaps that was a conventional assumption, and the reaction in thought and feeling may have been only conventional in many cases, but the suggestion did not fail of its effect even then. Later, when the ideals of epic heroism and of the old respect for the gods were popularly rejected and derided, this renunciation of the old stock of common ideas and faiths marked a decline in the morale of the nation. It is a very important question: What is the effect of conventional humbug in the mores of a people, which is suggested to the young as solemn and sacred, and which they have to find out and reject later in life? The Mahabharata, the Kalevala, the Edda, the Nibelungen Noth, are other examples of popular epics which had great influence on the mores for centuries. Such poems present models of action and principle, but it is inevitable that a later time will not appreciate them and will turn them to ridicule, or will make of them only poses and affectations. The former is the effect most likely to be produced on the masses, the latter on the cultured classes. In the Greco-Roman world, at the beginning of the Christian era, various philosophic sects tried to restore and renew the ideals of Greek heroism, virtue, and religious faith, so far as they seemed to have permanent ethical value. The popular mores were never touched by this effort. In fact, it is impossible for us to know whether the writings of Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Pliny represent to us the real rules of life of those men, or are only a literary pose. In the Renaissance, and since then, men educated in the classics have been influenced by them in regard to their standards of noble and praiseworthy character, and of what should be cultivated in thought and conduct. Such men have had a common stock of quotations, of accepted views in life philosophy, and of current ethical opinions. This stock, however, has been common to the members of the technical guild of the learned. It has never affected the masses. Amongst Protestants the Bible has, in the last four hundred years, furnished a common stock of history and anecdote, and has also furnished phrases and current quotations familiar to all classes. It has furnished codes and standards which none dared to disavow, and the suggestion of which has been overpowering. The effect on popular mores has been very great.

172. Symbols, pictures. Before the ability to read became general art was employed in the form of symbols to carry suggestion. Symbolic acts were employed in trade and contracts, in marriage and religion. For us writing has taken the place of symbols as a means of suggestion. Symbols do not appeal to us. They are not in our habits. Illustrative pictures influence us. The introduction of them into daily newspapers is an important development of the arts of suggestion. Mediaeval art in colored glass, carving, sculpture, and pictures reveals the grossness and crass simplicity of the mediaeval imagination, but also its childish originality and directness. No doubt it was on account of these latter characteristics that it had such suggestive power. It was graphic. It stimulated and inflamed the kind of imagination which produced it. It found its subjects in heaven, hell, demons, torture, and the scriptural incidents which contained any horrible, fantastic, or grotesque elements. The crucifix represented a man dying in the agony of torture, and it was the chief symbol of the religion. The suggestion in all this art produced barbaric passion and sensuality. Any one who, in childhood, had in his hands one of the old Bibles illustrated by wood cuts knows what power the cuts had to determine the concept which was formed from the text, and which has persisted through life, in spite of later instruction.

173. Apparatus of suggestion. In modern times the apparatus of suggestion is in language, not in pictures, carvings, morality plays, or other visible products of art. Watchwords, catchwords, phrases, and epithets are the modern instrumentalities. There are words which are used currently as if their meaning was perfectly simple, clear, and unambiguous, which are not defined at all. "Democracy," the "People," "Wall Street," "Slave," "Americanism," are examples. These words have been called "symbols." They might better be called "tokens." They are like token coins. They "pass"; that is their most noteworthy characteristic. They are familiar, unquestioned, popular, and they are always current above their value. They always reveal the invincible tendency of the masses to mythologize. They are personified and a superhuman energy is attributed to them. "Democracy" is not treated as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autocracy, etc., but as a Power from some outside origin, which brings into human affairs an inspiration and energy of its own. The "People" is not the population, but a creation of mythology, to which inherent faculties and capacities are ascribed beyond what can be verified within experience. "Wall Street" takes the place which used to be assigned to the devil. What is that "Wall Street" which is currently spoken of by editors and public men as thinking, wanting, working for, certain things? There is a collective interest which is so designated which is real, but the popular notion under "Wall Street" is unanalyzed. It is a phantasm or a myth. In all these cases there is a tyranny in the term. Who dare criticise democracy or the people? Who dare put himself on the side of Wall Street? The tyranny is greatest in regard to "American" and "Americanism." Who dare say that he is not "American"? Who dare repudiate what is declared to be "Americanism"? It follows that if anything is base and bogus it is always labeled "American." If a thing is to be recommended which cannot be justified, it is put under "Americanism." Who does not shudder at the fear of being called "unpatriotic"? and to repudiate what any one chooses to call "American" is to be unpatriotic. If there is any document of Americanism, it is the Declaration of Independence. Those who have Americanism especially in charge have repudiated the doctrine that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," because it stood in the way of what they wanted to do. They denounce those who cling to the doctrine as un-American. Then we see what Americanism and patriotism are. They are the duty laid upon us all to applaud, follow, and obey whatever a ruling clique of newspapers and politicians chooses to say or wants to do. "England" has always been, amongst us, a kind of counter token, or token of things to be resisted and repudiated. The "symbols," or "tokens," always have this utility for suggestion. They carry a coercion with them and overwhelm people who are not trained to verify assertions and dissect fallacies.

174. Watchwords, catchwords. A watchword sums up one policy, doctrine, view, or phase of a subject. It may be legitimate and useful, but a watchword easily changes its meaning and takes up foreign connotations or fallacious suggestions. Critical analysis is required to detect and exclude the fallacy. Catchwords are acutely adapted to stimulate desires. In the presidential campaign of 1900 we saw a catchword deliberately invented,—"the full dinner pail." Such an invention turns suggestion into an art. Socialism, as a subject of popular agitation, consists almost altogether of watchwords, catchwords, and phrases of suggestion: "the boon of nature," "the banquet of life," "the disinherited," "the submerged tenth," "the mine to the miner," "restore the land to the landless." Trades unionism consists almost entirely, on its philosophical side, of suggestive watchwords and phrases. It is said that "labor" creates all value. This is not true, but the fallacy is complete when labor is taken in the sense of "laborers," collectively and technically so called,—an abuse of language which is now current. To say that wage-earners create all value is to assert a proposition from which numerous and weighty consequences follow as to rights and interests. "The interest of one is the interest of all" is a principle which is as good for a band of robbers as for a union of any other kind. "Making work" by not producing is the greatest industrial fallacy possible.

175. Slave, democracy. Since "democratic" is now a word to conjure with, we hear of democracy in industry, banking, education, science, etc., where the word is destitute of meaning or is fallacious. It is used to prejudice the discussion. Since the abolition of slavery the word "slave" has become a token. In current discussions we hear of "rent slaves," "wages slavery," "debt slavery," "marriage slavery," etc. These words bear witness to great confusion and error in the popular notions of what freedom is and can be. For negroes emancipation contained a great disillusion. They had to learn what being "free" did not mean. Debt slavery is the oldest kind of slavery except war captivity. A man in debt is not free. A man who has made a contract is not free. A man who has contracted duties and obligations as husband and father, or has been born into them as citizen, son, brother, etc., is not free. Can we imagine ourselves "free" from the conditions of human life? Does it do any good to stigmatize the case as "wages slavery," when what it means is that a man is under a necessity to earn his living? It would be a grand reform in the mores if the masses should learn to turn away in contempt from all this rhetoric.

176. Epithets. Works of fiction have furnished the language with epithets for types of individuals (sec. 622). Don Quixote, Faust, Punch, Reinecke Fuchs, Br'er Rabbit, Falstaff, Bottom, and many from Dickens (Pickwick, Pecksniff, Podsnap, Turveydrop, Uriah Heep) are examples. The words are like coins. They condense ideas and produce classes. They economize language. They also produce summary criticisms and definition of types by societal selection. All the reading classes get the use of common epithets, and the usage passes to other classes in time. The coercion of an epithet of contempt or disapproval is something which it requires great moral courage to endure.

177. Phrases. The educated classes are victims of the phrase. Phrases are rhetorical flourishes adapted to the pet notions of the time. They are artifices of suggestion. They are the same old tricks of the medicine man adapted to an age of literature and common schools. Instead of a rattle or a drum the operator talks about "destiny" and "duty," or molds into easy phrases the sentiments which are popular. It is only a difference of method. Solemnity, unction, and rhetorical skill are needed. Often the phrases embody only visionary generalities. "Citizenship," "publicity," "public policy," "restraint of trade," "he who holds the sea will hold the land," "trade follows the flag," "the dollar of the fathers," "the key of the Pacific," "peace with honor," are some of the recent coinages or recoinages. Phrases have great power when they are antithetical or alliterative. Some opponents of the silver proposition were quite perplexed by the saying: "The white man with the yellow metal is beaten by the yellow man with the white metal." In 1844 the alliterative watchword "Fifty-four forty or fight" nearly provoked a war. If it had been "Forty-nine thirty or fight," that would not have had nearly so great effect. The "Cape to Cairo" railroad is another case of alliteration. Humanitarianism has permeated our mores and has been a fountain of phrases. Forty years ago the phrase "enthusiasm of humanity" was invented. It inspired a school of sentimental philosophizing about social relations, which has been carried on by phrase making: "the dignity of labor," "the nobility of humanity," "a man is not a ware," "an existence worthy of humanity," "a living wage." "Humanity" in modern languages is generally used in two senses: (a) the human race, (b) the sympathetic sentiment between man and man. This ambiguity enters into all the phrases which are humanitarian.

178. Pathos. Suggestion is powerfully aided by pathos, in the original Greek sense of the word. Pathos is the glamour of sentiment which grows up around the pet notion of an age and people, and which protects it from criticism. The Greeks, in the fourth century before Christ, cherished pathos in regard to tyrannicide. Tyrants were bosses, produced by democracy in towns, but hated by democrats. Tyrannicides were surrounded with a halo of heroism and popular admiration.[373] Something of the same sentiment was revived in the sixteenth century, when it appeared that a tyrant was any ruler whose politics one did not like. It cost several rulers their lives. Pathos was a large element in the notions of woman and knighthood (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), of the church (thirteenth century), of the Holy Sepulcher (eleventh and twelfth centuries). In the thirteenth century there was a large element of pathos in the glorification of poverty. A great deal of pathos has been expended on the history and institutions of Greece and Rome in modern times. Classical studies still depend largely on it for their prestige. There is a pathos of democracy in the United States. In all English-speaking countries marriage is an object of pathos. The pathos is cultivated by poetry and novels. Humanitarianism is nourished by pathos and it stimulates pathos. The "poor" and the "laborers" are objects of pathos, on account of which these terms, in literature, refer to a conventional and unreal concept. Consequently there is no honest discussion of any topic which concerns the poor or laborers. Some people make opposition to alcohol an object of pathos.

179. Pathos is unfavorable to truth. Whenever pathos is in play the subject is privileged. It is regarded with a kind of affection, and is protected from severe examination. It is made holy or sacred. The thing is cherished with such a preestablished preference and faith that it is thought wrong to verify it. Pathos, therefore, is unfavorable to truth. It has always been an element in religion. It is an element now in patriotism, and in regard to the history of one's own country. The coercion of pathos on the individual comes in popular disapproval of truth-telling about the matter in question. The toleration for forgery and fraud in the Christian church until modern times, which to modern people seems so shocking and inexplicable, was chiefly due to pathos about religion and the church. If a forgery would help the church or religion, any one who opposed it would seem to be an enemy of religion and the church and willing to violate the pathos which surrounded them.

180. The value of analysis and verification as tests. In all the cases of the use of catchwords, watchwords, and phrases, the stereotyped forms of language seem to convey thought, especially ascertained truth, and they do it in a way to preclude verification. It is absolutely essential to correct thinking and successful discussion to reject stereotyped forms, and to insist on analysis and verification. Evidently all forms of suggestion tend to create an atmosphere of delusion. Pathos increases the atmosphere of delusion. It introduces elements which corrupt the judgment. In effect, it continues the old notion that there are edifying falsehoods and useful deceits. The masses always infuse a large emotional element into all their likes and dislikes, approval and disapproval. Hence, in time, they surround what they accept with pathos which it is hard to break through.

181. Humanity. The standard of humanity or of decent behavior, especially towards the weak or those persons who may be at one's mercy, or animals, is entirely in the mores of the group and time. To the Gauchos of Uruguay "inhumanity and love of bloodshed become second nature." Their customs of treating beasts habituate them to bloodshed. "They are callous to the sight of blood and suffering and come to positively enjoy it." They have no affection for their horses and dogs. They murder for plunder.[374] It is very rarely that we meet with such a description as that of any people. Polynesians were bloodthirsty and cruel, perhaps because they had no chase of wild animals in which to expend their energies.[375] North American Indians could invent frightful tortures, but they were not bloodthirsty. They were not humane. Suffering did not revolt them. Schomburgk[376] tells a story of an Indian who became enraged at his wife because she groaned with toothache. He cut down her hammock and caused her to fall so that she suffered a dislocation of the arm. A European witness went to the chief with a report and remonstrance, but the chief was astonished that any one should take any notice of such an incident. The Assyrians cut in stone representations of flaying, impaling, etc., and of a king with his own royal hands putting out the eyes of prisoners. The Egyptians represented kings slaying men (national enemies) in masses. The Romans enjoyed bloodshed and the sight of suffering.[377] The Middle Ages reveled in cruelty to men and beasts. It is in the Middle Ages that we could find the nearest parallels to the Gauchos above. None of these people felt that repulsive revolt of the whole nature at inhumanity which characterizes modern cultivated people. The horrors have all receded out of our experience, and almost out of our knowledge. The line of familiarity is set far off. Therefore a little thing in the way of inhumanity is strange and exerts its full repulsive effect. Things happen, however, which show us that human nature is not changed, and that the brute in it may awake again at any time. It is all a question of time, custom, and occasion, and the individual is coerced to adopt the mores as to these matters which are then and there current.

182. Selection by distinction. One of the leading modes by which the group exercises selection of its adopted type on the individual is by distinction. Distinction is selection. It appeals to vanity. It acts in two ways and has two opposite effects. One likes to be separated from the crowd by what is admired, and dislikes to be distinguished for what is not admired. Cases occur in which the noteworthy person is not sure whether he ought to be proud or ashamed of that for which he is distinguished. When a society gives titles, decorations, and rewards for acts, it stimulates what it rewards and causes new cases of it. The operation of selection is direct and rational. The cases in which the application of distinction is irrational show most clearly its selective effect. School-teachers are familiar with the fact that children will imitate a peculiarity of one which marks him out from all the rest, even if it is a deformity or defect. Why then wonder that barbarian mothers try to deform their babies towards an adopted type of bodily perfection which is not rationally preferable? A lady of my acquaintance showed me one of her dolls which had wire attachments on its legs in imitation of those worn by children for orthopedic effect. She explained that when she was a child, another child who had soft bones or weak ankles, and who wore irons for them, was brought into her group of playmates. They all admired and envied her, and all wished that they had weak bones so that they could wear irons. This lady made wire attachments for her doll that it might reach the highest standard.

183. Aristocracies. All aristocracies are groups of those who are distinguished, at the time, for the possession of those things which are admired or approved, and which give superiority in the struggle for existence or in social power. In the higher civilization, until modern times, the possession of land was the only social power which would raise a man above sordid cares and enable him to plan his life as he chose. By talent an income could be won which would give the same advantage, but not with the same security of permanence and independence. The fields for talent were war, civil administration, and religion, the last including all mental activity. Men of talent had to win their place by craft and charlatanism (sorcery, astrology, therapeutics). Their position never was independent, except in church establishments. They had to win recognition from warriors and landowners, and they became comrades and allies of the latter. Merchants and bankers were the aristocracy at Carthage, Venice, Florence, and Genoa, and in the Hansa. Talented military men were aristocrats under Napoleon, courtiers were such under Louis XIV, and ecclesiastics at Rome. Since the fourteenth century capital has become a new and the greatest and indispensable social power. Those who, at any time, have the then most important social power in their hands are courted and flattered, envied and served, by the rest. They make an aristocracy. The aristocrats are the distinguished ones, and their existence and recognition give direction to social ambition. Of course this acts selectively to call out what is most advantageous and most valued in the society.

184. There are a number of mass phenomena which are on a lower grade than the mores, lacking the elements of truth and right with respect to welfare, which illustrate still further and more obviously the coercion of all mass movements over the individual. These are fashion, poses, fads, and affectations.

185. Fashion. Fashion in dress has covered both absurdities and indecencies with the aegis of custom. From the beginning of the fourteenth century laws appear against indecent dress. What nobles invented, generally in order to give especial zest to the costume of a special occasion, that burghers and later peasants imitated and made common.[378] In the fifteenth century the man's hose fitted the legs and hips tightly. The latchet was of a different color, and was decorated and stuffed as if to exaggerate still further the indecent obtrusiveness of it.[379] Schultz[380] says that the pictures which we have do not show the full indecency of the dress against which the clergy and moralists of the fifteenth century uttered denunciations, but only those forms which were considered decent, that is, those which were within the limits which custom at the time had established. At the same time women began to uncover the neck and bosom. The extent to which this may be carried is always controlled by fashion and the mores. Puritans and Quakers attempted to restrict it entirely, and to so construct the dress, by a neckerchief or attachment to the bodice, that the shape of the bust should be entirely concealed. The mores rejected this rule as excessive. In spite of all the eloquence of the moral preachers, that form of dress which shows neck and bosom has become established, only that it is specialized for full dress and covered by conventionalization.

186. Conventionalization. Conventionalization also comes into play to cover the dress of the ballet or burlesque opera and the bathing dress. Conventionalization always includes strict specification and limits of time, place, and occasion, beyond which the same dress would become vicious. Amongst Moslems and Orientals this conventionalization as to dress has never been introduced. We are familiar with the fact that when a fashion has been introduced and has become common our eye is formed to it, and no one looks "right" or stylish who does not conform to it. We also know that after the fashion has changed things in the discarded fashion look dowdy and rustic. No one can resist these impressions, try as he may. This fact, in the experience of everybody, gives us an example of the power of current custom over the individual. While a fashion reigns its tendency is to greater and greater extravagance in order to produce the desired and admired effect. Then the toleration for any questionable element in the fashion is extended and the extension is unnoticed. If a woman of 1860, in the dress of her time, were to meet a woman of 1906, in the dress of her time, each would be amazed at the indecency of the dress of the other. No dress ever was more, or more justly, denounced for ugliness, inconvenience, and indecency than the crinoline, but all the women from 1855 to 1865, including some of the sweetest who ever lived, wore it. No inference whatever as to their taste or character would be justified. There never is any rational judgment in the fashion of dress. No criticism can reach it. In a few cases we know what actress or princess started a certain fashion, but in the great majority of cases we do not know whence it came or who was responsible for it. We all have to obey it. We hardly ever have any chance to answer back. Its all-sufficient sanction is that "everybody wears it," or wears it so. Evidently this is only a special application to dress of a general usage—conventionalization.

187. Uncivilized fashions. Those "good old times" of simplicity and common sense in dress must be sought in the time anterior to waistband and apron. All the barbarians and savages were guilty of folly, frivolity, and self-deformation in the service of fashion. They found an ideal somewhere which they wanted to attain, or they wanted to be distinguished, that is, raised out of the commonplace and universal. At one stage distinction comes from being in the fashion in a high and marked degree. Also each one flees the distinction of being out of the fashion, which would not draw admiration. At another stage distinction comes from starting a new fashion. This may be done by an ornament, if it is well selected so that it will "take."[381] Beads have been a fashionable ornament from the days of savagery until to-day. An Indian woman in Florida "had six quarts (probably a peck) of the beads gathered about her neck, hanging down her back, down upon her breasts, filling the space under her chin, and covering her neck up to her ears. It was an effort for her to move her head. She, however, was only a little, if any, better off in her possessions than most of the others. Others were about equally burdened. Even girl babies are favored by their proud mammas with a varying quantity of the coveted neckwear. The cumbersome beads are said to be worn by night as well as by day."[382] "A woman sometimes hangs a weight of over five pounds around her neck, for besides the ordinary necklaces the northern women wear one or more large white, polished shells, which are brought from the western coast and which weigh from half a pound upward."[383] "Fashions change in Bechuanaland; one year the women all wear blue beads, but perhaps the next (and just when a trader has laid in a supply of blue beads) they refuse to wear any color but yellow. At the time of writing [1886] the men wore small black pot hats, but several years ago they had used huge felt hats, like that of Rip Van Winkle, and as a consequence the stores are full of those unsalable ones."[384]

188. Fashion in ethnography. The Carib women in Surinam think that large calves of the leg are a beauty. Therefore they bind the leg above the ankle to make the calves larger. They begin the treatment on children.[385] Some Australian mothers press down their babies' noses. "They laugh at the sharp noses of Europeans, and call them tomahawk noses, preferring their own style."[386] The presence of two races side by side calls attention to the characteristic differences. Race vanity then produces an effort to emphasize the race characteristics. Samoan mothers want the noses and foreheads of their babies to be flat, and they squeeze them with their hands accordingly.[387] The "Papuan ideal of female beauty has a big nose, big breasts, and a dark-brown, smooth skin."[388] To-day the Papuans all smoke white clay pipes. Four weeks later no one will smoke a white pipe. All want brown ones. Still four weeks later no one wants any pipe at all. All run around with red umbrellas.[389] On the Solomon Islands sometimes they want plain pipes; then again, pipes with a ship or anchor carved on them; again, pipes with a knob. Women wear great weights of metal as rings for ornament.[390] The Galla women wear rings to the weight of four or six pounds.[391] Tylor[392] says that an African belle wears big copper rings which become hot in the sun, so that the lady has to have an attendant, whose duty it is to cool them down by wetting them. The queen of the Wavunias on the Congo wore a brass collar around her neck, which weighed from sixteen to twenty pounds. She had to lie down once in a while to rest.[393] The Herero wear iron which in the dry climate retains luster. The women wear bracelets and leglets, and iron beads from the size of a pea to that of a potato. They carry weights up to thirty-five pounds and are forced to walk with a slow, dragging step which is considered aristocratic. Iron is rare and worth more than silver.[394] Livingstone says that in Balonda poorer people imitate the step of those who carry big weights of ornament, although they are wearing but a few ounces.[395] Some women of the Dinka carry fifty pounds of iron. The rings on legs and arms clank like the fetters of slaves. The men wear massive ivory rings on the upper arm. The rich cover the whole arm. The men also wear leather bracelets and necklaces.[396] In Behar, Hindostan, the women wear brass rings on their legs. "One of these is heavy, nearly a foot broad, and serrated all around the edges. It can only be put on the legs by a blacksmith, who fits it on the legs of the women with his hammer, while they writhe upon the ground in pain." Women of the milkman caste wear bangles of bell metal, often up to the elbow. "The greater the number of bangles, the more beautiful the wearer is considered."[397] The satirist could easily show that all these details are shown now in our fashions.

189. Ideals of beauty. In Melanesia a girdle ten centimeters wide is worn, drawn as tight as possible. One cut from the body of a man twenty-seven years old measured only sixty-five centimeters.[398] The women of the Barito valley wear the sarong around the thighs so tight that it restricts the steps and produces a mincing gait which they think beautiful.[399] The Rukuyenn of Guiana have an ideal of female beauty which is marked by a large abdomen. They wind the abdomen with many girdles to make it appear large. "The women of the Payaguas, in Paraguay, from youth up, elongate the breasts, and they continue this after they are mothers by means of bandages."[400] The southern Arabs drop hot grease from a candle on a bride's fingers, and then plaster the fingers with henna. Then the grease is taken off, and light-colored spots (if possible, regular) are left where it was, while the rest of the skin is colored brown by the henna. They put on the bride seventeen garments, a silk one and a muslin one alternately; then a mantle over all, and a rug on the mantle, and all possible ornaments.[401] Flinders Petrie thinks that we must recognize a principle of "racial taste," "which belongs to each people as much as their language, which may be borrowed like languages from one race by another, but which survives changes and long eclipses even more than language."[402] The cases given show that ideals of beauty are somehow formed, which call for a deformation of the human body. The foreheads are flattened, the lips enlarged, the ears drawn down, the skull forced into a sugar-loaf shape, the nose flattened, etc., to try to reach a form approved by fashion. There is an ideal of beauty behind the fashion, a selected type of superiority, which must be assumed as the purpose of the fashion.

190. Fashion in other things than dress. As will appear below, fashion controls many things besides dress. It governs the forms of utensils, weapons, canoes and boats, tools, etc., amongst savages. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a fashionable attitude or pose in standing for women, in which the abdomen was thrown forward. It is often seen in pictures and portraits.[403] It is inelegant and destitute of meaning. The Venetians were luxurious and frivolous, jealous and distrustful of women, and fond of pleasure and fashion. From the end of the sixteenth century a shopkeeper in the Merceria adopted a custom of showing the new fashions of Paris on Ascension Day by means of a life-size doll dressed in them.[404] The Venetian women of that period wore patins, shoes with blocks underneath, some of which were two feet high. The women were unable to walk without a maid on each side to support them.[405] Yriarte thinks that these patins were due to the policy of the husbands. When an ambassador, in conversation with the doge and his counselors, said that shoes would be far more convenient, a counselor replied, "Only too convenient! Only too much so!" Under the French Directory, a demi-terme was the name of a framework worn by women to look as if they would soon be mothers.[406] Thirty years ago "poufs" were worn to enlarge the dress on the hips at the side. The "Grecian bend," stooping forward, was an attitude both in walking and standing. Then followed the bustle. Later, the contour was closely fitted by the dress. No one thought that the human figure would be improved if changed as the dress made it appear to be. No fashion was adopted because it would have an indecent effect. The point for our purpose is that women wore dresses of the appointed shape because everybody did so, and for no other reason, being unconscious of the effect.

Erasmus, in his colloquy on the Franciscans, makes one of the characters say: "I think that the whole matter of dress depends upon custom and the opinions which are current." He refers to some unnamed place where adulterers, after conviction, are never allowed to uncover the private parts, and says, "Custom has made it, for them, the greatest of all punishments." "The fact is that nothing is so ridiculous that usage may not make it pass."

Fashion has controlled the mode of dressing the hair and deforming the body. It has determined what animals, or what special race of an animal species, should be petted. It controls music and literature, so that a composer, poet, or novelist is the rage or is forgotten. In mediaeval literature the modes of allegory were highly esteemed and very commonly used. The writers described war and battles over and over again, and paid little attention to nature. In fact, natural background, geography, and meteorology were made as conventional as stage scenery, and were treated as of no interest and little importance. Modern taste for reality and for the natural details throws this mediaeval characteristic by contrast into strong relief.

191. Miscellaneous fashions. Fashion rules in architecture. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England, English Renaissance and Gothic were regarded as barbaric, and palladian was admired. In France the preference was for rococo and Mansard forms. At the present time the English Renaissance and Gothic are in favor again, and palladian is regarded with disfavor. Painting and sculpture undergo variations of fashion as to standards and methods. The same is true of literature. Poetry and novels follow phases of fashion. A successful novel makes imitations and sets a fashion for a time. Types of heroes and ideals of character come and go by fashion. The type of the man-as-he-should-be varies by fashion, and this type exerts a great selection in the education of the young. Educational methods run through fashions. Fads in methods of teaching arise, are advocated with great emphasis, have their run, decline, and disappear. There are fashions of standing, walking, sitting, gesture, language (slang, expletives), pronunciation, key of the voice, inflection, and sentence accent; fashions in shaking hands, dancing, eating and drinking, showing respect, visiting, foods, hours of meals, and deportment. When snuff was taken attitudes and gestures in taking it were cultivated which were thought stylish. Fashion determines what type of female beauty is at a time preferred,—plump or svelte, blond or brunette, large or petite, red-haired or black-haired. When was that "simple time of our fathers" when people were too sensible to care for fashions? It certainly was before the Pharaohs and perhaps before the glacial epoch. Isaiah (iii. 16) rebukes the follies of fashion. Chrysostom preached to the early church against tricks and manners of gesture and walk which had been learned in the theater. Since literature has existed moralists have satirized fashion. Galton has noticed what any one may verify,—that old portraits show "indisputable signs of one predominant type of face supplanting another." "If we may believe caricaturists, the fleshiness and obesity of many English men and women in the earlier years of this century [nineteenth] must have been prodigious."[407] Part of this phenomenon may be due to the fashion of painting. The portrait painter warps all his subjects toward the current standard of "good looks," but it is more probable that there is a true play of variation. Platycnemism and the pierced olecranon run in groups for a time. Then they run out. There are fashions in disease, as if fashion were really in nature. This goes beyond the limits of our definition, but the rise and passing away of variations in breeding plants and animals, and perhaps in men, suggests that fashion may be an analogous play of experiment, half caprice, half earnest, whose utility lies in selection. If there was no reaching out after novelty except upon rational determination, the case would be very different from what it is when variation brings spontaneous suggestions. Our present modes of dress (aside from the variations imposed by fashion) are the resultant of all the fashions of the last two thousand years.

192. All deformations by fashion are irrational. There is no guarantee that fashions will serve expediency. Deformations of the skull may not be harmful; they are not useful. The block inserted in the lip interferes with eating and speaking. It alters the language. Saliva cannot be retained, and flows over it. To those who are outside the fashion it is extremely ugly and disgusting. To those inside the fashion it is a standard of beauty and a badge of dignity and tribal position. All fashions tend to extravagance because the senses become accustomed to them, and it is necessary, in order to renew the impression of distinction, to exaggerate. The extravagances of fashion run through all grades of civilization. They show that fashion, coming from the whole to the individual, adds nothing to the sense, judgment, or taste of the latter, but imposes on him a coercion to conform. He who dissents is thought rustic and boorish. He is more or less severely boycotted, which means not only that he is made to suffer, but that he loses important advantages and hurts his interests.

193. Satires on fashion. Forty years ago a lady who swung her arms as she walked was considered strong-minded. A lady who was young when the present queen of England introduced the fashion of brushing up the hair and uncovering the ears says that it seemed indecent. Fashion is stronger than autocracy. Nicholas I of Russia disapproved of late hours and ordered that court balls should be commenced early that they might be finished early. He found himself almost alone until eleven o'clock, and had to give up his reform.[408] In the height of the crinoline fashion Leech published in Punch a picture of two maiden ladies who "think crinoline a preposterous and extravagant invention and appear at a party in a simple and elegant attire." The shocked horror of the bystanders is perfect, but the two ladies would to-day be quite in the fashion. Du Maurier published in Punch a skit in which a little girl asked her mother how Eve knew, the first time that she saw Cain as a baby, that he was not ugly. This is a very clever hit at the origin of conventions. There was when Cain was born no established convention that all babies are pretty.

194. Fashion in faiths and ideals. There are also fashions in trading, banking, political devices, traveling, inn keeping, book making, shows, amusements, flowers, fancywork, carriages, gardens, and games. There seem to be fashions in logic and reasoning. Arguments which are accepted as convincing at one time have no effect at another (sec. 227, n. 4). For centuries western Europe accepted the argument for the necessity of torture in the administration of justice as convincing. At different periods the satisfaction in allegory as a valid method of interpretation has been manifested and the taste for allegory in the arts has appeared. Philosophy goes through a cycle of forms by fashion. Even mathematics and science do the same, both as to method and as to concepts. That is why "methodology" is eternal. Mediaeval "realism" ruled all thought for centuries, and its dominion is yet by no means broken. It prevails in political philosophy now. Nominalism is the philosophy of modern thought. Scholasticism held all the mental outfit of the learned. Thomas Aquinas summed up all that man knows or needs to know. A modern man finds it hard to hold his own attention throughout a page of it, even for historical purposes. "Phlogiston" and "vortices" had their day and are forgotten. Eighteenth-century deism and nineteenth-century rationalism interest nobody any more. Eighteenth-century economists argued in favor of stimulating population in order to make wages low, and thereby win in international competition. They never had a compunction or a doubt about this argument. No wonder it has been asserted that all truth, except that which is mathematically demonstrable, is only a function of the age. When the earth is underpopulated and there is an economic demand for men, democracy is inevitable. That state of things cannot be permanent. Therefore democracy cannot last. It contains no absolute and "eternal" truth. While it lasts a certain set of political notions and devices are in fashion. Certain moral standards go with them. Evolution is now accepted as a final fact in regard to organic phenomena. A philosophy of nature is derived from it. Is it only a fashion,—a phase of thought? For to all but a very few such a philosophy has no guarantee except that it is current. All accept it because all accept it, and for no other reason. Narrower philosophies become the fashion in classes, coteries, and cliques. They are really affectations of something which wins prestige and comes to be a badge of culture or other superiority. A few are distinguished because they know Greek, or because they are "freethinkers," or because they are ritualists, or because they profess a certain cultus in art, or because they are disciples of Ruskin, Eastlake, Carlyle, Emerson, Browning, Tolstoi, or Nietsche, and cultivate the ideas and practices which these men have advocated as true and wise. Often such fashions of thought or art pass from a narrow coterie to a wider class, and sometimes they permeate the mores and influence an age. When men believed in witches they did so because everybody did. When the belief in witches was given up it was because a few men set the fashion, and it was no longer "enlightened" to believe in them.