t means
this,--that in unavoidable changes men like the new doctrine which is
most of a 'preservative addition' to their old doctrines. The imitative
and the persecuting tendencies make all change in early nations a kind
of selective conservatism, for the most part keeping what is old, but
annexing some new but like practice--an additional turret in the old
style.

It is this process of adding suitable things and rejecting discordant
things which has raised those scenes of strange manners which in every
part of the world puzzle the civilised men who come upon them first.
Like the old head-dress of mountain villages, they make the traveller
think not so much whether they are good or whether they are bad, as
wonder how any one could have come to think of them; to regard them as
'monstrosities,' which only some wild abnormal intellect could have hit
upon. And wild and abnormal indeed would be that intellect if it were a
single one at all. But in fact such manners are the growth of ages,
like Roman law or the British constitution. No one man--no one
generation--could have thought of them,--only a series of generations
trained in the habits of the last and wanting something akin to such
habits, could have devised them. Savages PET their favourite habits, so
to say, and preserve them as they do their favourite animals; ages are
required, but at last a national character is formed by the confluence
of congenial attractions and accordant detestations.

Another cause helps. In early states of civilisation there is a great
mortality of infant life, and this is a kind of selection in
itself--the child most fit to be a good Spartan is most likely to
survive a Spartan childhood. The habits of the tribe are enforced on
the child; if he is able to catch and copy them he lives; if he cannot
he dies. The imitation which assimilates early nations continues
through life, but it begins with suitable forms and acts on picked
specimens. I suppose, too, that there is a kind of parental selection
operating in the same way and probably tending to keep alive the same
individuals. Those children which gratified their fathers and mothers
most would be most tenderly treated by them, and have the best chance
to live, and as a rough rule their favourites would be the children of
most 'promise,' that is to say, those who seemed most likely to be a
credit to the tribe according to the leading tribal manners and the
existing tribal tastes. The most gr