A national character is but the successful parish
character; just as the national speech is but the successful parish
dialect, the dialect, that is, of the district which came to be
more--in many cases but a little more--influential than other
districts, and so set its yoke on books and on society. I could
enlarge much on this, for I believe this unconscious imitation to be
the principal force in the making of national characters; but I have
already said more about it than I need. Everybody who weighs even
half these arguments will admit that it is a great force in the
matter, a principal agency to be acknowledged and watched; and for
my present purpose I want no more. I have only to show the efficacy
of the tight early polity (so to speak) and the strict early law on
the creation of corporate characters. These settled the predominant
type, set up a sort of model, made a sort of idol; this was
worshipped, copied, and observed, from all manner of mingled
feelings, but most of all because it was the 'thing to do,' the then
accepted form of human action. When once the predominant type was
determined, the copying propensity of man did the rest. The
tradition ascribing Spartan legislation to Lycurgus was literally
untrue, but its spirit was quite true.
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