Custom 



likely we must remain. But a change has come 

 over our minds. The vauntings of earlier days 

 we abandon. We^ at any rate, are no better than 

 anybody else, and at best, alas ! are only half 

 alive. 



If these, then, are our conclusions, is it not 

 with justice that children and early races keep 

 so rigidly to the narrow path that custom has made 

 for them ? Have they not an instinctive feeling 

 that to forsake custom would be to launch out on 

 a trackless sea where life would cease to have any 

 special purpose or direction, and morality would 

 be utterly gulfed ? Custom for them is the line 

 of their growth ; it is the coral-branch from the 

 end of which the next insect builds ; it is the 

 hardening bark of the tree-twig which determines 

 the direction of the growing shoot. It may be 

 merely arbitrary, this custom, but that they do 

 not know ; its appearance of finality and necessity 

 may be quite illusive ; but the illusion is necessary 

 for life, and the arbitrariness is just what makes 

 one life different from another. Till he grows 

 to manhood^ the human being, he cannot do without 

 it. 



And when he grows to manhood, what then } 

 Why he dies, and so becomes alive. The caddis- 

 fly leaves his tube behind and soars into the upper 

 air ; the creature abandons its barnacle existence 

 on the rock and swims at large in the sea. For 

 it is just when we die to custom that, for the first 

 time, we rise into the true life of humanity ; it 

 is just when we abandon all prejudice of our own 



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