, therefore, to tread in the footsteps of some one
else. Accordingly, the more deficient he is in either of these
qualities, the more is he open to the influence of example; and we
find, in fact, that most men's guiding star is the example of others;
that their whole course of life, in great things and in small, comes
in the end to be mere imitation; and that not even in the pettiest
matters do they act according to their own judgment. Imitation and
custom are the spring of almost all human action. The cause of it
is that men fight shy of all and any sort of reflection, and very
properly mistrust their own discernment. At the same time this
remarkably strong imitative instinct in man is a proof of his kinship
with apes.

But the kind of effect which example exercises depends upon a man's
character, and thus it is that the same example may possibly seduce
one man and deter another. An easy opportunity of observing this is
afforded in the case of certain social impertinences which come into
vogue and gradually spread. The first time that a man notices anything
of the kind, he may say to himself: _For shame! how can he do it! how
selfish and inconsiderate of him! really, I shall take care never to
do anything like that_. But twenty others will think: _Aha! if he does
that, I may do it too_.

As regards morality, example, like doctrine, may, it is true, promote
civil or legal amelioration, but not that inward amendment which is,
strictly speaking, the only kind of moral amelioration. For example
always works as a personal motive alone, and assumes, therefore,
that a man is susceptible to this sort of motive. But it is just the
predominating sensitiveness of a character to this or that sort of
motive that determines whether its morality is true and real; though,
of whatever kind it is, it is always innate. In general it may be said
that example operates as a means of promoting the good and the bad
qualities of a character, but it does not create them; and so it
is that Seneca's maxim, _velle non discitur_--_will cannot be
learned_--also holds good here. But the innateness of all truly moral
qualities, of the good as of the bad, is a doctrine that consorts
better with the metempsychosis of the Brahmins and Buddhists,
according to which a man's good and bad deeds follow him from one
existence to another like his shadow, than with Judaism. For Judaism
requires a man to come into the world as a moral blank, so that, in
virtue