When the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the Athenians were frightened and furious; they thought that they should ALL be ruined because some one had mutilated a god's image, and so offended him.
He recounts an incident in Athens to illustrate the collective fear and outrage over perceived offenses against the gods.
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More from Walter Bagehot
Subject to this saving remark, however, I not only admit, but maintain, that our Constitution is full of curious oddities, which are impeding and mischievous, and ought to be struck out.
I own that I do not entirely sympathise with the horror of these anomalies which haunts some of our best critics.
These anomalies, in a hundred instances, mark the old boundaries of a constitutional struggle.
The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.
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