New possibilities of mirth arise out of the collision between the imitative impulse to be fashionable, and respect for the customs of one’s group. An exaggeration of something in dress or speech which savours of an attempt to break through class-barriers cannot but amuse the onlooker disposed to mirth. Middle-class house-wives are, one hears, wont to enliven the dulness of their Sunday afternoons by a stealthy quizzing of their “maids” as they set out for their parade. The maid’s village acquaintance—if it could succeed in stifling envious admiration—would doubtless draw a more rollicking enjoyment from the spectacle. In general, any appearance of craning one’s neck so as to overtop one’s set is greeted by a slightly malicious laughter; and the bold donning of fashionable array is the most easily recognisable manifestation of the craning impulse. For a more purely disinterested spectator, too, the situation has its entertaining drollness. The struggle in the panting bosom of a young woman, whether of white or of coloured race, as the passionate longing for some bewitching novelty—recommended, too, by the lead of her superiors—is sharply confronted with the sense of what befits her, and possibly a vague fear of being plunged by a fiery zeal into the morass of the laughable, has its comic pathos for the instructed eye. One further contribution to the fun of the world made by this hot eagerness to pay homage to rank is perhaps worth a reference. Like the verbal kind, the flattery of imitation is often visibly hollow. When the soul of man or woman is held captive by the necessity of doing what is done by {279} others—especially by others higher up—there is no room for thought of sincerity: whence, among many results, this one, that for him who can be pure spectator responsive to the amusing aspects of things, the spectacle of a great national demonstration of loyalty cannot fail to have its diverting aspect. No doubt the pushing worshippers of fashion, if they only wait long enough, get their chance of laughing back. As soon as the new thing, so charged with rollicking gaiety at first, settles down to a commonplace habit, there comes the moment for ridiculing the belated imitator. That popular figure on the stage, the “old dowdy,” is commonly represented as ridiculously behind the times in respect of attire. Yet the range of jocosity inspired by respect for mere newness, on the value of which reason has had nothing to say, is evidently limited. We may now turn to those deeper currents of change which together make up social progress; including all distinct advance from lower to higher forms of intelligence, sentiment and character, as well as from lower to higher types of social life; and, along with these, the growth of institutions in which these changes express themselves.