ABSTRACT
Ceremony does not approach the dignity of a social institution playing some part in the life of society. It is a private procedure generalized by imitation but no more significant in the social economy than is fashion, which Mr. Spencer deems to be of a kind with ceremony. Formality in personal intercourse, then, can be traced to two roots — servility and self-respect. In many cases, the ceremony of occasion is something more than means of record. Ceremony is solemn; this, not in order to be remembered, but in order to leave a moral impress. A coronation or a knighting is a miniature drama intended to produce an effect upon the feelings of the principals or spectators. Ceremonies are not exposed so much to disintegration as beliefs that cannot divine their virtue. And what is lost is not replaced. It is as hard for a sophisticated age to make new ceremony as to make new myths or new epics.
