500 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



very resistances which divergence from them entails he none 

 the less, on his return home, finds his actions in social intercourse 

 determined by the same need of conforming to some larger or 

 smaller group of which he may happen for the time to be a mem- 

 ber. It is because of this " doing at Rome as Rome does " that 

 social gatherings are said to succeed best and to be most enjoy- 

 able when the guests are all alike each other on certain social 

 sides of human nature, or are willing to appear to be thus alike 

 during the period of their association. The fact that the social 

 code, as it is sometimes called, frowns upon the guest who would 

 take more than his share of the attention or time of the company, 

 and encourages the host to an equal distribution of his favors to 

 all of them alike this shows how thoroughly, even in the social 

 circle, imitation of the group is the direction of greatest ease, and 

 how it is the stress of the resistances offered to unlikeness by the 

 group as a whole which impels the members of it to those acts 

 of imitation by which they are more or less temporarily assimi- 

 lated. 



The very description, again, of costumes as de rigueur for cer- 

 tain special occasions contains a suggestion of the resistance which 

 the social group opposes to unlikenesses in dress. The attacks 

 sometimes made upon strangely attired persons in so highly con- 

 servative a country as China have had their parallels even in the 

 highly progressive countries of Europe and America. A similar 

 antagonism is manifested to nonconformity in social manners ; 

 and all formulae of such manners the etiquette at baptisms, wed- 

 dings, and funerals ; established methods of paying and receiving 

 visits ; prescriptions of what to do and what not to do at the din- 

 ner table are simply means, among those who attach importance 

 to these minutias, of avoiding the resistances that would inevi- 

 tably be encountered were there many ways, instead of a gener- 

 ically common manner, of behaving on social occasions. 



The resistance offered to unlikenesses among associated indi- 

 viduals is also announced in that universal human character, the 

 passion for equality among men the tendency, however vaguely 

 or vividly it may be felt, to insist upon it that those with whom 

 we come into contact shall, in as many respects as possible, be 

 likes of ourselves. Jealousy of special privilege, with its spirit 

 embodied in such phrases as " fair play," " start equal," " share 

 and share alike," " a fair field and no favor," begins to manifest 

 itself very early in the life of the individual : mere children, when 

 associated, insist in multifarious ways on likeness of treatment ; 

 anything like favoritism in the distribution of gifts or the be- 

 stowal of attention, as well as all unfair advantage in games, 

 they resent with surprising promptness and vigor, often also 

 with indignation. In adults this jealousy of unequalness finds 



