Qualities of leadership may be utilized in the support of the customary or the established, as well as in initiation and support of the novel. People ape the great, or those that pass for great, in manners and morals. The words of a distinguished public man have prestige in the maintenance of the established. Men _will_ follow, and if the socially conspicuous lead them along the ways of the established, they will follow there as readily and, being creatures of habit, often more readily than along new paths. The immense following among the lower social classes that the Conservative Party had in England all through the nineteenth century in the face of proposed changes that would have bettered their own conditions, is an interesting illustration of this. This is partly because the influence of leaders is dependent on their social status as well as their personal qualities. The opinions of inventors and big business men are taken with eagerness and credulity even when touching matters outside their own field. A man is made, as it were, _ipso facto_, a leader, by being rich, powerful, of a socially distinguished family, or the director of a large industry, although he may have, besides, qualities of leadership that do not depend on his social position. MAN PITIES AND PROTECTS WEAK AND SUFFERING THINGS. Nearly all human beings exhibit a tendency to protect weak and suffering things. This impulse is closely related to, and probably has its origin in the parental instinct, more common, of course, in women than in men. The feeling of affectionate pity and the impulse to rescue from pain are most intense when the distressed thing is a child, and particularly one's own. One of the most poignant instances extant is the speech of Andromache, one of the Trojan women in Euripides's play of that name, to her child who is about to be slain by the Greeks: And none to pity thee!... Thou little thing, That curlest in my arms, what sweet scents cling All round thy neck! Beloved; can it be All nothing, that this bosom cradled thee And fostered; all the weary nights wherethrough I watched upon thy sickness, till I grew Wasted with watching? Kiss me. This one time; Not ever again. Put up thine arms and climb About my neck; now kiss me, lips to lips... O ye have found an anguish that outstrips All tortures of the East, ye gentle Greeks! Why will ye slay this innocent that seeks No wrong?...[1] [Footnote 1: Euripides: ''Trojan Women'' (Gilbert Murray translation), p. 49.]