I am speaking, in the main, of the mass of the workers, but it would be entirely unjust to insinuate that they alone need adult education. The conventions of social life, the extraordinary slavery to fashions and artificial rules, betray an intellectual flabbiness in the wealthier members of society which just as urgently calls for stimulation. We seem at times quite incapable of drawing a line between acts of real courtesy and taste, which imply a certain grace or delicacy of character, and conventional usages which have no rational basis. The insistence on these conventional usages is part of that general slavery to false traditions which I am assailing. The most flagrant instance of this weakness of mind and character is the docility with which we meet changes of fashion in dress, or retain eccentric forms of clothing. Hardly any other feature so strongly impresses the close observer with the fact that the race, as a whole (and I speak only of civilised communities), advances little in intelligence and self-possession in spite of the progress made by its intellectual experts. One would say that here, especially, we need a strong draught of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche,--the gospel of self-assertion, of strong personality, of severe reasoning,--but I have not observed that our modern Nietzscheans differ much from their neighbours in such matters. Yet the commercial expansion of modern times is making this tyranny of fashion more ludicrous than it ever was before. The fashion-plates and descriptions contained in ladies' journals have always provoked the furtive smile of the male. A coterie of tradesmen, who are eager to promote business, and of wealthy ladies who are equally eager to show that their purses are unlimited, decree that the hat or costume shall continually vary in shape and colour. The Anglo-French jargon of the sartorial journalist then impresses on a larger circle of ladies the need of alertness and the horror of being _démodée_,--it would be proof of incapacity to say "out of fashion,"--and, as the season approaches, the proclamation of the forthcoming colour or model is awaited with more feverish anxiety than the announcement of the national budget. Schools of artists are secretly inventing some variation--the wider the variation the better--on the thousands of costumes which have already graced the feminine frame, or discussing bold suggestions of reviving an ancient model which has long disappeared even from the shops of wardrobe-dealers. Privileged ladies rise in prestige by obtaining and whispering advance information. At length the shop-windows blaze with the new colour, the journals depict an ingenious new combination of edges and folds and puckers, and womanhood plunges to the bottom of its purse with an eagerness to avoid the suspicion of financial stringency; while the discarded hats and dresses percolate romantically through lower strata of society. Is it not good for trade?