well become onerous, since it
would rest on convenience, inclination and the neglect of artificial
discrepancies. The more intimate institutions of modern life, that
govern human conduct locally and in detail, need not be affected, or not
greatly affected, for better or worse. Yet something appreciable in that
way might also fairly be looked for in time.

The nature, reach and prescriptive force of this prospective coalescence
through neutralisation may perhaps best be appreciated in the light of
what has already come to pass, without design or mandatory guidance, in
those lines of human interest where the national frontiers interpose no
bar, or at least no decisive bar, whether by force of unconcern or
through impotence. Fashions of dress, equipage and decorous usage, e.g.,
run with some uniformity throughout these modern nations, and indeed
with some degree of prescriptive force. There is, of course, nothing
mandatory, in the simpler sense, about all this; nor is the degree of
conformity extreme or uniform throughout. But it is a ready-made
generalisation that only those communities are incorporated in this
cosmopolitan coalescence of usage that are moved by their own
incitement, and only so far as they have an effectually felt need of
conformity in these premises. It is true, a dispassionate outsider, if
such there be, would perhaps be struck by the degree of such painstaking
conformity to canons of conduct which it frequently must cost serious
effort even to ascertain in such detail as the case calls for.
Doubtless, or at least presumably, conformity under the jurisdiction of
the fashions, and in related provinces of decorum, is obligatory in a
degree that need not be looked for throughout the scheme of use and wont
at large, even under the advisedly established non-interference of the
authorities. Still, on a point on which the evidence hitherto is
extremely scant it is the part of discretion to hold no settled opinion.

A more promising line of suggestion is probably that afforded by the
current degree of contact and consistency among the modern nations in
respect of science and scholarship, as also in the aesthetic or the
industrial arts. Local color and local pride, with one thing and another
in the way of special incitement or inhibition, may come in to vary the
run of things, or to blur or hinder a common understanding and mutual
furtherance and copartnery in these matters of taste and intellect. Yet
it is s