and result, the art of human reshaping has taken
definite character, has left its incidental beginnings far behind, has
become an institution, a group of institutions.

Wherever a language exists, as a magazine of established meanings, there
will be found a repertoire of epithets of praise and blame, at once
results and implements of this social process. The simple existence of
such a vocabulary acts as a persistent force; but the effect of current
ideals is redoubled when a coherent agency, such as public religion,
assumes protection of the most searching social maxims and lends to them
the weight of all time, all space, all wonder, and all fear. For many
centuries religion held within itself the ripening self-knowledge and
self-discipline of the human mind. Now, beside this original agency we
have its offshoots, politics, education, legislation, the penal art. And
the philosophical sciences, including psychology and ethics, are the
especial servants of these arts.

As to structure, human nature is undoubtedly the most plastic part of
the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals,
it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building
forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts
least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of
habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his susceptibility to
social impressions keenest; and it becomes clear that in every way
nature, as a prescriptive power, has provided in him for her own
displacement. His major instincts and passions first appear on the
scene, not as controlling forces, but as elements of _play_, in a
prolonged life of play. Other creatures nature could largely finish: the
human creature must finish himself.

And as to history, it cannot be said that the results of man's attempts
at self-modeling appear to belie the liberty thus promised in his
constitution. If he has retired his natural integument in favor of a
device called clothing, capable of expressing endless nuances, not alone
of status and wealth, but of temper and taste as well--conservatism or
venturesomeness, solemnity, gaiety, profusion, color, dignity,
carelessness or whim, he has not failed to fashion his inner self into
equally various modes of character and custom. That is a hazardous
refutation of socialism which consists in pointing out that its success
would require a change in human nature. Under the spell of particular