This particular item of learned
ritual, it may be noted, would not only commend itself to the
leisure-class sense of the fitness of things, as appealing to the
archaic propensity for spectacular effect and the predilection
for antique symbolism; but it at the same time fits into the
leisure-class scheme of life as involving a notable element of
conspicuous waste. The precise date at which the reversion to cap
and gown took place, as well as the fact that it affected so
large a number of schools at about the same time, seems to have
been due in some measure to a wave of atavistic sense of
conformity and reputability that passed over the community at
that period.
It may not be entirely beside the point to note that in point of
time this curious reversion seems to coincide with the
culmination of a certain vogue of atavistic sentiment and
tradition in other directions also. The wave of reversion seems
to have received its initial impulse in the psychologically
disintegrating effects of the Civil War. Habituation to war
entails a body of predatory habits of thought, whereby
clannishness in some measure replaces the sense of solidarity,
and a sense of invidious distinction supplants the impulse to
equitable, everyday serviceability.
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