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 Zimes was asked one day how it happened that all 
the articles in that paper seemed to come from the same 
hand. “Qh,” 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 proy- 
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 aman, 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- 
