from the transmitted ordinances becomes
simple folly. It is a sacrifice of the happiness of the greatest
number. It is allowing one individual, for a moment's pleasure or a
stupid whim, to bring terrible and irretrievable calamity upon all. No
one will ever understand even Athenian history, who forgets this idea
of the old world, though Athens was, in comparison with others, a
rational and sceptical place, ready for new views, and free from old
prejudices. When the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the
Athenians were frightened and furious; they thought that they should
ALL be ruined because some one had mutilated a god's image, and so
offended him. Almost every detail of life in the classical times--the
times when real history opens--was invested with a religious sanction;
a sacred ritual regulated human action; whether it was called 'law' or
not, much of it was older than the word 'law;' it was part of an
ancient usage conceived as emanating from a superhuman authority, and
not to be transgressed without risk of punishment by more than mortal
power. There was such a solidarite then between citizens, that each
might be led to persecute the other for fear of harm to himself.

It may be said that these two tendencies of the early world--that to
persecution and that to imitation--must conflict; that the imitative
impulse would lead men to copy what is new, and that persecution by
traditional habit would prevent their copying it. But in practice the
two tendencies co-operate. There is a strong tendency to copy the most
common thing, and that common thing is the old habit. Daily imitation
is far oftenest a conservative force, for the most frequent models are
ancient. Of course, however, something new is necessary for every man
and for every nation. We may wish, if we please, that to-morrow shall
be like to-day, but it will not be like it. New forces will impinge
upon us; new wind, new rain, and the light of another sun; and we must
alter to meet them. But the persecuting habit and the imitative combine
to insure that the new thing shall be in the old fashion; it must be an
alteration, but it shall contain as little of variety as possible. The
imitative impulse tends to this, because men most easily imitate what
their minds are best prepared for,--what is like the old, yet with the
inevitable minimum of alteration; what throws them least out of the old
path, and puzzles least their minds. The doctrine of developmen