causes that are
misunderstood and slanderously misrepresented. The fables of Spenser
are fables only in form, and a noble knight may at any time go forth,
armed in the panoply of a tail-coat, a dress waistcoat, and a manly
moral courage, to do battle across the dinner-table and in the
drawing-room for those who have none to defend them.

It is unphilosophical to set ourselves obstinately against custom in the
mass, for it multiplies the power of men by settling useless discussion
and clearing the ground for our best and most prolific activity. The
business of the world could not be carried forward one day without a
most complex code of customs; and law itself is little more than custom
slightly improved upon by men reflecting together at their leisure, and
reduced to codes and systems. We ought to think of custom as a most
precious legacy of the past, saving us infinite perplexity, yet not as
an infallible rule. The most intelligent community would be conservative
in its habits, yet not obstinately conservative, but willing to hear and
adopt the suggestions of advancing reason. The great duty of the
intellectual class, and its especial function, is to confirm what is
reasonable in the customs that have been handed down to us, and so
maintain their authority, yet at the same time to show that custom is
not final, but merely a form suited to the world's convenience. And
whenever you are convinced that a custom is no longer serviceable, the
way to procure the abolition of it is to lead men very gradually away
from it, by offering a substitute at first very slightly different from
what they have been long used to. If the English had been in the habit
of tattooing, the best way to procure its abolition would have been to
admit that it was quite necessary to cover the face with elaborate
patterns, yet gently to suggest that these patterns would be still more
elegant if delicately painted in water-colors. Then you might have gone
on arguing--still admitting, of course, the absolute necessity for
ornament of some kind--that good taste demanded only a moderate amount
of it; and so you would have brought people gradually to a little
flourish on the nose or forehead, when the most advanced reformers might
have set the example of dispensing with ornament altogether. Many of our
contemporaries have abandoned shaving in this gradual way, allowing the
whiskers to encroach imperceptibly, till at last the razor lay in the
dressing-case