Wordsworth says, 'of style very much comes out of the manner.' If
you will endeavour to write an imitation of the thoughts of Swift in
a copy of the style of Addison, you will find that not only is it
hard to write Addison's style, from its intrinsic excellence, but
also that the more you approach to it the more you lose the thought
of Swift. The eager passion of the meaning beats upon the mild
drapery of the words. So you could not express the plain thoughts of
an Englishman in the grand manner of a Spaniard. Insensibly, and as
by a sort of magic, the kind of manner which a man catches eats into
him, and makes him in the end what at first he only seems.

This is the principal mode in which the greatest minds of an age
produce their effect. They set the tone which others take, and the
fashion which others use. There is an odd idea that those who take
what is called a 'scientific view' of history need rate lightly the
influence of individual character. It would be as reasonable to say
that those who take a scientific view of nature need think little of
the influence of the sun. On the scientific view a great man is a
great new cause (compounded or not out of other causes, for I do not
here, or elsewhere in these papers, raise the question of free-
will), but, anyhow, new in all its effects, and all its results.
Great models for good and evil sometimes appear among men, who
follow them either to improvement or degradation.

I am, I know, very long and tedious in setting out this; but I want
to bring home to others what every new observation of society brings
more and more freshly to myself--that this unconscious imitation and
encouragement of appreciated character, and this equally unconscious
shrinking from and persecution of disliked character, is the main
force which moulds and fashions men in society as we now see it.