s go over into the mores,
but they are fashions because they are arbitrary, have no rational
grounds, cannot be put to any test, and have no sanction except that
everybody submits to them.

+196. Remoter effects of fashion.+ The selective effect of fashion, in
spite of its irrationality and independently of the goodness or badness
of its effect on interests, is a reflection on the intelligence of men.
It accounts for many heterogeneous phenomena in society. The fashions
influence the mores. They can make a thing modest or immodest, proper or
improper, and, if they last long enough, they affect the sense and the
standards of modesty and propriety. Fashions of banking and trading
affect standards of honesty, or definitions of cheating and gambling.
Public shows, dances, punishments, and executions affect, in time,
standards of decency, taste in amusement, sentiments of humanity, views
as to what is interesting and attractive. Methods of argument which are
fashionable may train people to flippancy, sophistry, levity of mind,
and may destroy the power to think and reason correctly. Scherr[409]
says that fashion served as a means to transfer to Germany the
depravation of morals which had corrupted the Latin nations in the
sixteenth century. Fashions now spread through all civilized nations by
contact and contagion. They are spread by literature.

+197. Slang and expletives.+ Slang and expletives are fashions in
language. Expletives are of all grades from simple interjections to the
strongest profanity. Many expletives are ancient religious formulas of
objurgation, obsecration, asseveration, anathema, etc. They express a
desire to curse or bless, invite or repel. Where the original sense is
lost they sink into interjections, the whole sense of which is in the
accent. Their use rises and falls with fashion in nations, classes,
groups, and families, and it controls the habits of individuals. Whether
certain persons use a pious dialect, a learned (pedantic) dialect, a
gambler's slang, a phraseology of excessive adjectives and silly
expletives, or profane expressions, oaths, and phrases which abuse
sacred things, depends on birth and training. In this sense each dialect
is the language for each group and corresponds to the mores of the
group. There may be some psychology of expletives,[410] but they seem to
be accounted for, like slang, by the expediency of expression, which is
the purpose of all language. There is a need for ex