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 wou