Walter Bagehot

But one use they assuredly had: they fixed the yoke of custom thoroughly on mankind.

At first sight it seems impossible to imagine what conceivable function such awful religions can perform in the economy of the world.

To get at the worst, you should look where the destroying competition has been least--at America, where sectional civilisation was rare, and a pervading coercive civilisation did not exist; at such religions as those of the Aztecs.

This is the archaic part of that very world which we look at as so ancient; an 'antiquity' which descended to them, hardly altered, perhaps, from times long antecedent, which were as unintelligible to them as to us, or more so.

They fancied there were powers behind it which must be pleased, soothed, flattered, and this very often in a number of hideous ways.

But, above all things, they were frightened of 'the world;' the spectacle of nature filled them with awe and dread.

Not only had they no comfort, no convenience, not the very beginnings of an epicurean life, but their mind within was as painful to them as the world without.

Dryden had a dream of an early age, 'when wild in woods the noble savage ran;' but 'when lone in woods the cringing savage crept' would have been more like all we know of that early, bare, painful period.

And it is but too plain how in such places and periods men cling to customs because customs alone stand between them and starvation.

Only one check, one sole shield for life and good, is then possible;--usage.

And our notion of written leases is as out of place in a world without writing and without reading as a House of Commons among Andaman Islanders.

Land in that state of society is (for all but a petty skilled minority) a necessary of life, and all the unincreasable land being occupied, a man who is turned out of his holding is turned out of this world, and must die.

Most Oriental communities live on land which in theory is the property of a despotic sovereign, and neither they nor their families could have the elements of decent existence unless they held the land upon some sort of fixed terms.

The fixed custom which public opinion alone tolerates is imposed on all minds, whether it suits them or not.

But the peculiarity of arrested civilisation is to kill out varieties at birth almost; that is, in early childhood, and before they can develop.

In certain respects each born generation is not like the last born; and in certain other respects it is like the last.

The work of nature in making generations is a patchwork--part resemblance, part contrast.

By a law of which we know no reason, but which, is among the first by which Providence guides and governs the world, there is a tendency in descendants to be like their progenitors, and yet a tendency also in descendants to DIFFER from…

The reason is, that only those nations can progress which preserve and use the fundamental peculiarity which was given by nature to man's organism as to all other organisms.

They look as if they had paused when there was no reason for pausing--when a mere observer from without would say they were likely not to pause.

India, Japan, China, almost every sort of Oriental civilisation, though differing in nearly all other things, are in this alike.

A large part, a very large part, of the world seems to be ready to advance to something good--to have prepared all the means to advance to something good,--and then to have stopped, and not advanced.

What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first…

The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step.

They died out and history did not begin till after they were gone.