242 CULTURE 



In one department of social life the faculty of 

 imitation must always be reinforced by feelings 

 of reverence. This is in the education of the 

 young, which is ultimately based upon the respect 

 which is felt for parents and teachers. Learning, 

 it may be objected, is acquired rather by obedience 

 than by imitation. But obedience is essentially 

 a form of imitation : it is the repetition of an 

 impression that is received under stress of 

 authority. Fortunately for the progress of man- 

 kind the imitative instincts of the young are not 

 encumbered with accretions of habit, and act so 

 effectively that in a few years' time the growing 

 generation can appropriate the acquirements of 

 many centuries. At the present day knowledge 

 has become so extensive and so diversified that it 

 is impossible that individuals should learn the 

 whole of it. Teaching is specialized, and par- 

 ticular branches of science are committed to 

 different classes of the community. But, taken 

 as a whole, each generation assimilates all that 

 its predecessors have gained. And the boys of a 

 village school are in possession of knowledge that 

 lay beyond the ken of Plato and Aristotle. 

 ' When the chains of custom have once been 

 unlocked, sympathy may assist the spread of 

 changes, instead of retarding it. This is illus- 

 trated by the vagaries of fashion, which directs 

 not merely our dress and manners, but our artistic 

 ideas. The appreciation of mountain scenery is a 

 modern taste. The Romans were not an uncultured 

 people : they crossed and recrossed the Alps, but 

 appear only to have formed impressions of diffi- 

 culty and discomfort. In Dr. Johnson's time there 

 was little admiration for Highland landscapes. 

 A fashion for Greek art led the Renaissance. In 

 modern painting and music strange tastes are 

 arising under the fashion of the day. During the 



