And, though it is no small thing to inoculate seventy millions of people
with new standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to
be done. We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap
for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as
dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for
their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease.
So we go back to the psychology of imitation again. There is only one
way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us setting an example
which the others may pick up and imitate till the new fashion spreads
from east to west. Some of us are in more favorable positions than
others to set new fashions. Some are much more striking personally and
imitable, so to speak. But no living person is sunk so low as not to be
imitated by somebody. Thackeray somewhere says of the Irish nation that
there never was an Irishman so poor that he didn't have a still poorer
Irishman living at his expense; and, surely, there is no human being
whose example doesn't work contagiously in _some_ particular.
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