Any one
of these innovations would, we are told, "shake the social
structure to its base," "reduce society to chaos," "subvert the
foundations of morality," "make life intolerable," "confound the
order of nature," etc. These various locutions are, no doubt, of
the nature of hyperbole; but, at the same time, like all
overstatement, they are evidence of a lively sense of the gravity
of the consequences which they are intended to describe. The
effect of these and like innovations in deranging the accepted
scheme of life is felt to be of much graver consequence than the
simple alteration of an isolated item in a series of contrivances
for the convenience of men in society. What is true in so obvious
a degree of innovations of first-rate importance is true in a
less degree of changes of a smaller immediate importance. The
aversion to change is in large part an aversion to the bother of
making the readjustment which any given change will necessitate;
and this solidarity of the system of institutions of any given
culture or of any given people strengthens the instinctive
resistance offered to any change in men's habits of thought, even
in matters which, taken by themselves, are of minor importance.
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