396 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fads : literary fads like Maeterlinck or tlie Decadents ; philosophic 

 fads like pessimism or anarchism, religious fads like spiritual- 

 ism or theosophy ; hygienic fads like vegetarianism, " glaming," 

 " fresh air," mush diet, or water cure ; medical fads like lymph, 

 tuberculin, and serum ; personal fads like short hair for women, 

 pet lizards, face enamel, or hypodermic injections of perfumery. 

 And of these orders of fads each has a clientele of its own. 



In many cases we can explain vogue entirely in terms of 

 novelty fascination and mob mind. But even when the new 

 thing is a step in progress and can make its way by sheer merit, 

 it does not escape becoming a fad. It will have its penumbral 

 ring of imitators. So there is something of the fad even in 

 bicycling, massage, antisepsis, skiagraphy, or physical culture. 

 Indeed, it is sometimes hard to distinguish the fad from the en- 

 thusiastic welcome and prompt vogue accorded to a real improve- 

 ment. For the uninitiate the only touchstone is time. Here as 

 elsewhere "persistence in consciousness" is the test of reality. 

 The mere novelty, soon ceasing to be novel, bores people and must 

 yield to a fresh sensation ; the genuine improvement, on the other 

 hand, meets a real need and therefore lasts. 



Unlike the craze, the fad does not spread in a medium special- 

 ly prepared for it by excitement. It can not rely on heightened 

 suggestibility. Its conquests, therefore, imply something above 

 mere volume of suggestion. They imply prestige. The fad owes 

 half its power over minds to the prestige that in this age attaches 

 to the new. Here lies the secret of much that is puzzling. 



The great mass of men have always had their lives ruled by 

 usage and tradition. Not for them did novelties chase each other 

 across the surface of society. The common folk left to the upper 

 ten thousand the wild scurry after ruling fancy or foolery of the 

 hour. In their sports, their sweethearting, their mating, their 

 child-rearing, their money-getting, their notions of right and 

 duty, they ran on quietly in the ruts deeply grooved out by gen- 

 erations of men. But a century or so ago it was found that this 

 habit of " back "-look opposed to needed reforms the brutish 

 ignorance, the crass stupidity, and the rhinoceros hide of bigotry of 

 the unenlightened masses. Accordingly, the idea of the humani- 

 tarian awakening that accompanied the French Revolution was 

 to lift the common folk the third estate from the slough of 

 custom to the plane of choice and self-direction. And for a 

 hundred years the effort has been to explode superstition, to dif- 

 fuse knowledge, to spread light, and to free man from the spell of 

 the past and turn his gaze forward. 



The attempt has succeeded. The era of obscurantism is for- 

 ever past. With school and book and press progress has been 

 taught till with us the most damning phrase is "Behind the 



