are irrational.+ There is no guarantee
that fashions will serve expediency. Deformations of the skull may not
be harmful; they are not useful. The block inserted in the lip
interferes with eating and speaking. It alters the language. Saliva
cannot be retained, and flows over it. To those who are outside the
fashion it is extremely ugly and disgusting. To those inside the fashion
it is a standard of beauty and a badge of dignity and tribal position.
All fashions tend to extravagance because the senses become accustomed
to them, and it is necessary, in order to renew the impression of
distinction, to exaggerate. The extravagances of fashion run through all
grades of civilization. They show that fashion, coming from the whole to
the individual, adds nothing to the sense, judgment, or taste of the
latter, but imposes on him a coercion to conform. He who dissents is
thought rustic and boorish. He is more or less severely boycotted, which
means not only that he is made to suffer, but that he loses important
advantages and hurts his interests.

+193. Satires on fashion.+ Forty years ago a lady who swung her arms as
she walked was considered strong-minded. A lady who was young when the
present queen of England introduced the fashion of brushing up the hair
and uncovering the ears says that it seemed indecent. Fashion is
stronger than autocracy. Nicholas I of Russia disapproved of late hours
and ordered that court balls should be commenced early that they might
be finished early. He found himself almost alone until eleven o'clock,
and had to give up his reform.[408] In the height of the crinoline
fashion Leech published in _Punch_ a picture of two maiden ladies who
"think crinoline a preposterous and extravagant invention and appear at
a party in a simple and elegant attire." The shocked horror of the
bystanders is perfect, but the two ladies would to-day be quite in the
fashion. Du Maurier published in _Punch_ a skit in which a little girl
asked her mother how Eve knew, the first time that she saw Cain as a
baby, that he was not ugly. This is a very clever hit at the origin of
conventions. There was when Cain was born no established convention that
all babies are pretty.

+194. Fashion in faiths and ideals.+ There are also fashions in trading,
banking, political devices, traveling, inn keeping, book making, shows,
amusements, flowers, fancywork, carriages, gardens, and games. There
seem to be fashions in logic and reasoning. A