use they are disciples of Ruskin,
Eastlake, Carlyle, Emerson, Browning, Tolstoi, or Nietsche, and
cultivate the ideas and practices which these men have advocated as true
and wise. Often such fashions of thought or art pass from a narrow
coterie to a wider class, and sometimes they permeate the mores and
influence an age. When men believed in witches they did so because
everybody did. When the belief in witches was given up it was because a
few men set the fashion, and it was no longer "enlightened" to believe
in them.

+195. Fashion not trivial; not subject to argument.+ Fashion is by no
means trivial. It is a form of the dominance of the group over the
individual, and it is quite as often harmful as beneficial. There is no
arguing with the fashion. In the case of dress we can sometimes tell
what princess or actress started the fashion, and we sometimes know, in
the case of ideas, who set them afloat. Generally, however, it is not
known who started a fashion in dress. The authority of fashion is
imperative as to everything which it touches. The sanctions are ridicule
and powerlessness. The dissenter hurts himself; he never affects the
fashion. No woman, whatever her age or position or her opinion about the
crinoline fashion, could avoid wearing one. No effort to introduce a
fashion of "rational dress" for women has ever yet succeeded. An artist,
novelist, poet, or playwright of a school which is out of fashion fails
and is lost. An opponent of the notions which are current can get no
hearing. The fashion, therefore, operates a selection in which success
and merit are often divorced from each other, but the selection is
pitiless. The canons of criticism are set by fashion. It follows that
there is no rational effect of fashion. There was a rule in goblinism:
Say naught but good of the dead. The rule was dictated by fear that the
ghost would be angry and return to avenge the dead. The rule has come
down to us and is an imperative one. Eulogies on the dead are,
therefore, conventional falsehoods. It is quite impossible for any one
to depart from the fashion. The principle is in fashion that one should
take the side of the weaker party in a contest. This principle has no
rational ground at all. There is simply a slight probability that the
stronger will be in the wrong. Fashion requires that we should all
affect nonpartisanship in discussion, although it is absurd to do so. Of
course these weighty rules on important matter