is often retained that was useful when something else was beside it.
To go to architecture for an instance, a pinnacle is retained, not
that it is of any use where it is, but in another kind of building
it would have been. That style of building, as a whole, has gone
out of fashion, but the pinnacle has somehow or other kept its
ground and must be there, no one insolently going back to first
principles and asking what is the use and object of building
pinnacles. Similar instances in dress will occur to my readers.
Some of us are not skilled in such affairs; but looking at old
pictures we may sometimes see how modern clothes have attained their
present pitch of frightfulness and inconvenience. This matter of
dress is one in which, perhaps, you might expect the wise to conform
to the foolish; and they have.

When we have once come to a right estimate of the strength of
conformity, we shall, I think, be more kindly disposed to
eccentricity than we usually are. Even a wilful or an absurd
eccentricity is some support against the weighty common-place
conformity of the world. If it were not for some singular people
who persist in thinking for themselves, in seeing for themselves,
and in being comfortable, we should all collapse into a hideous
uniformity.

It is worth while to analyse that influence of the world which is
the right arm of conformity. Some persons bend to the world in all
things, from an innocent belief that what so many people think must
be right. Others have a vague fear of the world as of some wild
beast which may spring out upon them at any time. Tell them they
are safe in their houses from this myriad-eyed creature: they still
are sure that they shall meet with it some day, and would propitiate