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CHAP. XV.] reversion to an ancestral and inferior type a tailed boy is occasionally born, or an idiot possessing the characteristics of an ape, a sheep, or a goose, as in Pinel's cases, so it applies among other things to fashion in dress. For example, when we see, as quite recently, a revival of the maiden queen's high, stifif ruff, or of the first gentleman in Europe's stock, we see that which, although it once had a reason and a use, is now as objectless as the tail used by certain monkeys to swing from bough to bough would be to human beings who do not favour such a means of locomotion.

We of the present day who, as the latest outcome of social evolution, look back upon earlier stages with a sort of contempt should, nevertheless, endeavour to learn from the past whatever lessons it can teach, and they are many.

We should use our reason to discriminate between what was evil and what was good in the customs of bygone ages, and never forget that the cause which blinded the men and women of those times to evils which are patent to us, is still as active as ever, and prevents us, in our turn, from perceiving evils which will be patent to our successors when we shall be looked back to as ignorant old fogies. That cause is the vanity which, seemingly inherent in the human mind, makes each successive generation maintain that, "whatever I do, whatever I think, and whatever I say, must be right and proper." Hence the present always looks back upon the past with contempt, and forward to the future with doubt as to whether it will