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Our table manners, and company manners, and street manners change from time to time, but the changes are not reasoned out; we merely notice and conform. We are creatures of outside influences; as a rule we do not think, we only imitate. We cannot invent standards that will stick; what we mistake for standards are only fashions, and perishable. We may continue to admire them, but we drop the use of them. We notice this in literature. Shakespeare is a standard, and fifty years ago we used to write tragedies which we couldn’t tell from—from somebody else's; but we don't do it any more, now. Our prose standard,three quarters of a century ago, was ornate and diffuse; some authority or other changed it in the direction of compactness and simplicity, and conformity followed, without argument. The historical novel starts up suddenly, and sweeps the land. Everybody writes one, and the nation is glad. We had historical novels before; but nobody read them, and the rest of us conformed—without reasoning it out. We are conforming in the other way, now, because it is another case of everybody.
我们的餐桌礼仪、交际方式和街头风俗都在不时发生改变，但是，这些变化没有被思考过；我们只不过是注意和顺从罢了。我们是一种受外界影响的生物，通常我们不思考，仅仅是在模仿。我们无法发明出持久的标准；我们误认为标准的只不过是时尚潮流而已，而那是转瞬即逝的。我们可能会继续赞美它们，但是已不再使用它们。我们在文学方面注意到了这一点。莎士比亚是一个标准，五十年前，我们常常写悲剧，而这些悲剧无法——无法与别人的作品相区别；但是如今我们不再那样做了。七十五年前，我们散文的标准是辞藻华丽、行文冗赘；某些权威人物改变了这种标准，使之走向紧凑简洁的风格，然后人们毫无异议，纷纷效仿这种做法。历史小说突然流行起来，一时风靡全国。每人都写一部，全国上下皆大欢喜。我们以前有过历史小说，但没有人去读，我们其余的人也都照做不误一没有多加思考。我们现在以另外一种方式来遵循着，就因为它是又一件大家都做的事。
