ill ideal upon personal character.

Suggestion also explains much. In such a social whole, manners and
customs are fixed. The newcomer is often fresh, ingenuous, and sometimes
intrusive. Little by little he becomes socialized. Ways of action are
fixed for him, and a range of performance comes to be his. In harmony
with this range, suggestion is very fertile; but one learns after a time
that there is a limit to its force beyond which individuals will not go.
Suggestion, to be effective upon the many, must come from the sources
which embody the community's religious and economic ideal.

Ideas, once broached, are usually, if they contemplate action, opposed,
at least by inertness; but after a time they reappear as if native to
the minds which would have none of them by reasonable approaches. This
process is accelerated if the suggestion begins to travel from mind to
mind. Some individuals are less slow than others; and the leaders of
Quaker Hill thinking have always been able to work by the plan of
academic proposal--to avoid rejection--followed by incitement of popular
action in particular quarters. Quaker Hill cannot bear to be divided;
and that which comes to be successful in one quarter soon comes to be
universal. Things can be done by social suggestion which could never be
accomplished by appeal or rational discussion.

The word that has formed the social mind of Quaker Hill has been, not
"the Spirit," not "the inner light," but "orthodoxy" or "plainness." For
this community, it must be remembered, had no great thinkers. It
discouraged study, stiffened reason in formulas and dissolved thinking
in vision. To its formulas the Hill has been exceedingly devoted. He
who upheld them was accepted, and he who rejected them, as well as he
who ignored them, was to the early Quaker Hill as if he did not exist.

This shibboleth has indeed always been religious. Even to-day the way of
direct access to the common heart is a religious one. Catholic as well
as Protestant, Quaker no more and no less than "the world's people,"
welcome religious approaches, respect confessions, and believe
experiences. Nothing can assemble them all which does not originate in
religion and clothe itself in religious sanction. History is religious
history. Business prosperity is approved when the prosperity has
followed religious profession.

I do not mean to say that there are not other symbols than those of
religion. Prosperity has spoken its shibbo