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 culture