In Greek mythology there is a story of a bandit named Procrustes who fitted each of his victims to an iron bed. If he was too short, he stretched him on a rack; and, if he was too long,he amputated his legs at the right point. He insisted that no one was an early proponent of standardization.

¡¡¡¡But he would be amazed to find in us, centuries later, a similar uniformity. Just as Procrustes insisted on conformity to his particular height, so modern society has insisted on conformity to a particular level the average. Perhaps you have noticed in your life, as l have in mine, the readiness with which we Chinese accept the common and the ordinary, and the skepticism with which we regard the different and the superior. The individuality we often ridicule; but the parrot we applaud.