It would seem that the repression of non-conformity is a native impulse, and that tolerance always requires some moral exertion. We all cherish our habitual system of thought, and anything that breaks in upon it in a seemingly wanton manner, is annoying to us and likely to cause resentment. So our first tendency is to suppress the peculiar, and we learn to endure it only when we must, either because it is shown to be reasonable or because it proves refractory to our opposition. The innovator is nearly as apt as anyone else to put down innovation in others. Words denoting singularity usually carry some reproach with them; and it would perhaps be found that the more settled the social system is, the severer is the implied condemnation. In periods of disorganization and change, such as ours is in many respects, people are educated to comparative tolerance by unavoidable familiarity with conflicting views—as religious toleration, for instance, is the outcome of the continued spectacle of competing creeds. Sir Henry Maine, in discussing the forces that controlled the legal decisions of a Roman prætor, remarks that he “was kept within the narrowest bounds by the prepossessions imbibed from early training and by the strong restraints of professional opinion, restraints of which the stringency can only be appreciated by those who have personally experienced them.”[74] In the same way every profession, trade or handicraft, every church, circle, fraternity or clique, has its more or less definite standards, conformity to which it tends to impose on all its members. It is not at all essential that there should be any deliberate purpose to set up these standards, or any special machinery for enforcing them. They spring up spontaneously, as it were, by an unconscious process of assimilation, and are enforced by the mere inertia of the minds constituting the group. Thus every variant idea of conduct has to fight its way: as soon as anyone attempts to do anything unexpected the world begins to cry, “Get in the rut! Get in the rut! Get in the rut!” and shoves, stares, coaxes, and sneers until he does so—or until he makes good his position, and so, by altering the standard in a measure, establishes a new basis of conformity. There are no people who are altogether non-conformers, or who are completely tolerant of non-conformity in others. Mr. Lowell, who wrote some of the most stirring lines in literature in defence of non-conformity, was himself conventional and an upholder of conventions in letters and social intercourse. Either to be exceptional or to appreciate the exceptional requires a considerable expenditure of energy, and no one can afford this in many directions. There are many persons who take pains to keep their minds open; and there are groups, countries, and periods which are comparatively favorable to open-mindedness and variation; but conformity is always the rule and non-conformity the exception.