unused. The abominable black cylinders that covered our
heads a few years ago were vainly resisted by radicals in custom, but
the moderate reformers gradually reduced their elevation, and now they
are things of the past.

Though I think we ought to submit to custom in matters of indifference,
and to reform it gradually, whilst affecting submission in matters
altogether indifferent, still there are other matters on which the only
attitude worthy of a man is the most bold and open resistance to its
dictates. Custom may have a right to authority over your wardrobe, but
it cannot have any right to ruin your self-respect. Not only the virtues
most advantageous to well-being, but also the most contemptible and
degrading vices, have at various periods of the world's history been
sustained by the full authority of custom. There are places where forty
years ago drunkenness was conformity to custom, and sobriety an
eccentricity. There are societies, even at the present day, where
licentiousness is the rule of custom, and chastity the sign of weakness
or want of spirit. There are communities (it cannot be necessary to name
them) in which successful fraud, especially on a large scale, is
respected as the proof of smartness, whilst a man who remains poor
because he is honest is despised for slowness and incapacity. There are
whole nations in which religious hypocrisy is strongly approved by
custom, and honesty severely condemned. The Wahabee Arabs may be
mentioned as an instance of this, but the Wahabee Arabs are not the only
people, nor is Nejed the only place, where it is held to be more
virtuous to lie on the side of custom than to be an honorable man in
independence of it. In all communities where vice and hypocrisy are
sustained by the authority of custom, eccentricity is a moral duty. In
all communities where a low standard of thinking is received as
infallible common sense, eccentricity becomes an intellectual duty.
There are hundreds of places in the provinces where it is impossible for
any man to lead the intellectual life without being condemned as an
eccentric. It is the duty of intellectual men who are thus isolated to
set the example of that which their neighbors call eccentricity, but
which may be more accurately described as superiority.

LETTER II.

TO A CONSERVATIVE WHO HAD ACCUSED THE AUTHOR OF A WANT OF RESPECT FOR
TRADITION.

Transition from the ages of tradition to that of
experiment--Attraction of t