Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/94

76 and Roman republics the moral ideal was patriotism; among mediæval Churchmen it took the form of asceticism; after the elevation of woman the central idea was female chastity.

In this national morality, which is the cohesive force of the body social, we find the fundamental principle of the progressional impulse, and herein is the most hopeful feature of humanity; mankind must progress, and progress in the right direction. There is no help for it until God changes the universal order of things; man must become better in spite of himself; it is the good in us that grows and ultimately prevails.

As a race we are yet in our nonage; fearful of the freedom given us by progress we cling tenaciously to our leading-strings; hugging our mother, Custom, we refuse to be left alone. Liberty and high attainments must be meted out to us as we are able to receive them, for social retchings and vomitings inevitably follow over-feedings. Hence it is, that we find ourselves escaped from primeval and mediæval tyrannies only to fall under greater ones; society is none the less inexorable in her despotisms because of the sophistry which gives her victims fancied freedom. For do we not now set up forms and fashions, the works of our own hands, and bow down to them as reverently as ever our heathen ancestors did to their gods of wood and stone? Who made us? is not the first question of our catechism, but What will people say?

Of all tyrannies, the tyranny of fashion is the most implacable; of all slaveries the slavery to fashion is the most abject; of all fears the fear of our fellows is the most overwhelming; of all the influences that surround and govern man the forms and customs which he encounters in society are the most domineering. It is the old story, only another turn of the wheel that grinds and sharpens and polishes humanity—at the first a benefit, now a drag. Forms and fashions are essential; we cannot live without them. If we