348 NATURE AND LIFE. 



writer conceives a style which the public enthusiastically 

 welcomes. He strikes a vein. He breaks in the readers 

 of his books, the hearers of his plays, to this style, be it 

 good or bad ; and we see for a time all authors sentenced, 

 if they would succeed, to imitate the lucky inventor. Thus, 

 even if there were no natural or instinctive imitation, there 

 would be interested or compulsory imitation. The founder 

 of the Times was asked one day how it happened that all 

 the articles in that paper seemed to come from the same 

 hand. " Oh," he answered, " there is always one editor 

 superior to the rest, and all the others imitate him." 



The whole history of religions is full of instances prov- 

 ing to what extent men are led, not by reasonings, but by 

 examples, and what a disposition they have to repeat what 

 they have seen or heard, to govern their lives in accordance 

 with the striking or successful models they have in view. 

 Many a winning cause, famous for the persuasive genius of 

 its advocates, owes its triumph rather to that hidden impulse 

 which urges us irresistibly to imitation of others. Is not this 

 potency of surroundings in producing by degrees radical 

 changes in habits, opinions, and even in creeds, manifest 

 also in the scene of political society ? Is there any thing 

 easier than for a man, who has gained control over the mul- 

 titude, to bring it round to his feelings, his thoughts, his 

 visions ? Is not this as strikingly and as distinctly taught 

 by the daily experience in the education of children ? We 

 often remark in a school that the outward characteristics, 

 the tone, the ways, the amusements, change from year to 

 year. It is because some leading spirits, two or three chil- 

 dren who had an ascendency, have gone. Others have 

 come, and every thing is altered. As the models change, 

 the copies change too. New things are praised, and differ- 

 ent things are ridiculed. The instinct of imitation is spe- 

 cially developed among men who are wanting in education 

 or civilization. Savages copy quicker and better than Eu- 



