FASHION. 215 



Ceremony, is an accompaniment of the industrial type as 

 distinguished from the militant type. It needs but to ob 

 serve that by using silver forks at his table, the trades 

 man in so far asserts his equality with the squire; or still 

 better to observe how the servant-maid out for her holiday 

 competes with her mistress in displaying the last style of 

 bonnet; to see how the regulations of conduct grouped 

 under the name Fashion, imply that increasing liberty 

 which goes along with the substitution of peaceful activities 

 for warlike activities. 



As now existing, Fashion is a form of social regulation 

 analogous to constitutional government as a form of politi 

 cal regulation : displaying, as it does, a compromise between 

 governmental coercion and individual freedom. Just as, 

 along with the transition from compulsory co-operation to 

 voluntary co-operation in public action, there has been a 

 growth of the representative agency serving to express the 

 average volition; so has there been a growth of this indefi 

 nite aggregate of wealthy and cultured people, whose con 

 sensus of habits rules the private life of society at large. 

 And it is observable in the one case as in the other, that this 

 ever-changing compromise between restraint and freedom, 

 tends towards increase of freedom. For while, on the aver 

 age, governmental control of individual action decreases, 

 there is a decrease in the rigidity of Fashion; as is shown by 

 the greater latitude of private judgment exercised within 

 certain vaguely marked limits. 



Imitative, then, from the beginning, first of a superior s 

 defects, and then, little by little, of other traits peculiar to 

 him, Fashion has ever tended towards equalization. Serv 

 ing to obscure, and eventually to obliterate, the marks of 

 class-distinction, it has favoured the growth of individual 

 ity; and by so doing has aided in weakening Ceremonial, 

 which implies subordination of the individual. 



