three times a year, to remember that there are such things as laws in existence.
Society, on the other hand, no member of it ever forgets. For society has infinite functions, and makes itself felt as a formative force upon every member of it on every day of his life. It regulates our intimate personal relations and determines their quality. It gives shape to our hopes and fears, our pleasures and pains and despairs. How does it perform these various, complex and all-decisive activities? How does society get its will accomplished? Well, I might ask those who are so fortunate as to be married, How does one's wife get her will accomplished? Interesting question, to which every one knows the answer. Society gets its will accomplished in a similar way—in a somewhat feminine fashion; by lifting its eyebrows, by a disdainful sweep of its skirts, and, above all, by incessantly, tirelessly, day and night, expressing its mind and unpacking its heart in words, till no one fails to understand utterly what it hates and loves and disdains, its enthusiasm and its antipathies, its taboos and sanctions, its penalties and rewards.
We are now prepared for a preliminary definition of our subject: Literature is the effective voice of the social government. It is
