Imitation is divided into sets of complementary tendencies; custom imitation and fashion imitation; sympathy imitation and obedience imitation; naïve imitation and deliberate imitation.[XXII-19] Everywhere custom imitation and fashion imitation are embodied in two parties, divisions, or organizations--the conservative and the liberal.[XXII-20] Through custom imitation, usages acquire autocratic power. They control habit, regulate private conduct, and define morals and manners with imperial authority. Usages are frequently extra-logical imitations. Usages are commonly accepted first by the upper classes. They usually are related primarily to objects of luxury; they stick tenaciously to the leisure-time phases of life. Their most favorable _milieu_ is a social and individual status of ignorance. Fashion imitation rules by epochs, for example: Athens under Solon, Rome under the Scipios, Florence in the fifteenth century.[XXII-21] These epochs of fashion produce great individualities--illustrious legislators, and founders of empire. Whenever the currents of fashions are set free, the inventive imagination is excited and ambitions are stimulated. Fashion imitation has a democratizing influence. A prolonged process of fashion imitation ends “by putting pupil-peoples upon the same level, both in their armaments and in their arts and sciences, with their master people.”[XXII-22] In fact, the very desire to be like the superior is a latent democratizing force. The counterpart of imitation is opposition. Opposition, however, may be a very special kind of repetition. There are two types of opposition: interference-combinations and interference-conflicts.[XXII-23] The first type refers to the coming together of two psychological quantities of desire and belief with the result that combination takes place and a total gain is made. The second type refers to the opposition resulting from incompatible forces. In this case an individual or social loss is registered. From another standpoint, opposition appears in one of three forms, namely, war, competition, and discussion.[XXII-24] Conflicts often pass through these three forms, which are obedient to the same law of development, but in order are characterized by ever-widening areas of pacification, alternating however with renewals of discord. As war is the lowest, most brutal form of conflict, discussion is the highest, most rational form. Opposition in human life is society’s logical duel.[XXII-25] This duel sometimes ends abruptly when one of the adversaries is summarily suppressed by force. Sometimes a resort to arms brings a military victory. Sometimes a new invention or discovery expels one of the adversaries from the social scene.