eager to buy, and eager to order: in a week or so you will find
almost the whole society depressed, anxious, and wanting to sell. If
you examine the reasons for the activity, or for the inactivity, or
for the change, you will hardly be able to trace them at all, and as
far as you can trace them, they are of little force. In fact, these
opinions were not formed by reason, but by mimicry. Something
happened that looked a little good, on which eager sanguine men
talked loudly, and common people caught their tone. A little while
afterwards, and when people were tired of talking this, something
also happened looking a little bad, on which the dismal, anxious
people began, and all the rest followed their words. And in both
cases an avowed dissentient is set down as 'crotchety.' 'If you
want,' said Swift, 'to gain the reputation of a sensible man, you
should be of the opinion of the person with whom for the time being
you are conversing.' There is much quiet intellectual persecution
among 'reasonable' men; a cautious person hesitates before he tells
them anything new, for if he gets a name for such things he will be
called 'flighty,' and in times of decision he will not be attended
to.

In this way the infection of imitation catches men in their most
inward and intellectual part--their creed. But it also invades men--
by the most bodily part of the mind--so to speak--the link between
soul and body--the manner. No one needs to have this explained; we
all know how a kind of subtle influence makes us imitate or try to
imitate the manner of those around us. To conform to the fashion of
Rome--whatever the fashion may be, and whatever Rome we may for the
time be at--is among the most obvious needs of human nature. But
what is not so obvious, though as certain, is that the influence of
the imitation goes deep as well as extends wide. 'The matter,' as