Our Behaviour/Part 1/Chapter 1

CIVILIZATION may be defined as that process of social culture which removes men and women from the natural or savage state into one wherein are called out those higher moral and intellectual qualities and capacities which in the uncivilized individual are only in an embryonic condition.

I know that exception will be taken to this definition by many who are unwise worshipers of Nature in her crudest manifestations, and who think that only right which is primitively natural. But let us consider. In the natural state man is a savage. He wears only sufficient clothing to protect him from the inclemencies of the weather. Though eating constitutes one of his greatest enjoyments, he has not yet invented any of those arts which refine and intensify it, but finds sensual pleasure in the mere gluttonous satisfaction of appetite. In his purely ​natural state he seeks a lair amid the rocks like the wild beasts. A little development teaches him to gather together branches from the forest and reeds from the marshes with which to build himself a rude hut as a protection against two-footed and four-footed enemies during the unconscious hours of sleep. To eat and sleep, and to leave others behind him who shall go on eating and sleeping, is the sum-total of existence to the savage man. He knows nothing of law or order, of beauty or science. Selfishness is the first law of his being. Some philosopher has said truly that the most important question between primitive men was, "Can I kill thee, or canst thou kill me?" Might is right; the weaker submit to the stronger, not merely in the manner in which we—with our thousands of years of gradually-increasing civilization, cultivating our intelligence and humanity and moulding our ideas—understand submission, but to the degree of suffering indescribable indignities and cruelties, and even death, at the hands of the party in power. The weak are the lawful prey of the stronger; all women are the slaves of all men, the sport of their caprices, their beasts of burden, and the foil by which man demonstrates his masculine superiority.

The inferior condition of woman, it is curious to remark, is the last trace of the natural life of man to disappear before the encroachments of civilization; and those who maintain the "natural" inferiority of women are right in so far as they state the actual and ​undeniable condition of things in an untutored natural state of humanity. However, it is a condition which properly accompanies the lair, the hut and all other savage accessories.

A book of this kind is hardly the proper place to give numerous illustrations of this fact. One will suffice. M. Huc, whose prolonged residence in China gave him unprecedented opportunities for judging of the social institutions of that country, declares that the woman is always the slave of the man, never protected or even recognized by the law. If by chance allusion is made to her in any legal proceeding, it is merely to remind her of her inferiority, and that she is only in this world to obey and suffer. M. Huc says: "Privations of every kind and of every day, invectives, curses from time to time, also blows,—these are her heritage which she must endure with patience." The same gentleman also describes a scene to which he was an eye-witness, when, observing a crowd assembled around a young woman bruised and bleeding, he inquired the cause, and was informed that her husband had beaten her for no other reason than that "people were laughing at him because he had never beaten his wife," which lack of discipline was considered a wide departure from marital dignity. This woman he admitted had in no wise offended him or given him the slightest cause for chastisement. She died two days afterward from the effects of this beating. Yet China is a nation which has had for thousands of ​years a sort of civilization; and probably the reason why she has never advanced beyond a certain point is that the degraded and despised condition of her women holds her back.

It has been wisely remarked that the true advancement of a nation may be exactly determined by the position of its women. According as the mothers of the race are respected and cherished will the sons be wise, noble and unselfish.

Civilization, then, is the force or power which calls us out from that natural state in which we are most nearly allied to the brutes, and in which selfish interests alone predominate, and places us in a condition where we may recognize ourselves as belonging to a common humanity, and in which the best good of each is subserved by permitting many "natural" rights of individuals to be subordinated to the interests of all.

Nature teaches two strange savages to approach each other as enemies. Each, suspicious of the hostile intent of the other, maintains a natural right to kill that other in self-defence. Civilization teaches each man to respect the right of the other to live, and to refrain from killing him in the hope and expectation that the other will be equally considerate.

Yet, after all, I fear civilization has not as yet permeated very deeply the hearts of men. Its influence is apt to come and go with the daylight or as a man passes to and from the ken of his acquaintances. Many a man who considers himself a gentleman at ​home develops into a ruffian or a boor among strangers, or a savage in the darkness. Two strangers in a strange place seldom approach each other without the old savage nature asserting itself in feelings of mutual distrust; and if those feelings are not exhibited in overt act, it is well.

And here we may find the uses of etiquette. We are not all equally civilized; some of us are scarcely more than savage by nature and training, or rather lack of training. Yet we all wish to put on the regalia of civilization that we may be recognized as belonging to the guild of ladies and gentlemen in the world.

A perfect gentleman or lady instinctively knows just what to do under all circumstances, and need be bound by no written code of manners. Yet there is an unwritten code which is as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and we who would acquire gentility (I use the word with its best meaning) must by some means make ourselves familiar with this.

The true gentleman is rare, but, fortunately, there is no crime in counterfeiting his excellences. The best of it is that the counterfeit may, in course of time, develop into the real thing.

A true gentleman is always himself at his best. He is inherently unselfish, thinking always of the needs and desires of others before his own. He is dignified among equals, respectful but not groveling to his superiors, tender and considerate to inferiors, and helpful and protecting to the weak. He does ​not put on his gentility among gentlemen and gentlewomen only to turn ruffian among ruffians and among those of the other sex who from any cause are not recognized as ladies. Women—all women, of whatever age or condition—claim his respectful care and tender and reverential regard. A gentleman is, in fact, a man with the strength of manhood combined with the delicacy of womanhood.

The following is Ruskin's opinion concerning the gentleman: "A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation, and of that structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies—one may say, simply, 'fineness of nature.' This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. Elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no touch of the boughs, but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose-leaf, yet subdue its feelings in the glow of battle and behave itself like iron. I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal; but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way, and in his sensitive trunk and still more sensitive mind and capability of pique on points of honor. Hence it will follow that one of ​the probable signs of high breeding in men generally will be their kindness and mercifulness, these always indicating more or less firmness of make in the mind."

How shall I describe a lady? Solomon has done it for me:

"The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.

"She will do him good, and not evil, all the days of her life.

"She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.

"She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.

"She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.

"Her husband is known in the gates.

"Strength and honor are her clothing.

"She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness."

Strength, honor, wisdom, goodness and virtue are her requisites. A woman strong and womanly in all ways, in whom the heart of a husband can safely trust—this is the perfect lady.

That all should seek to shape the way and fashion of their lives in accordance with these models there can be no doubt. The best and surest course to pursue for that end is to look for, and to imitate as far as possible, the manifestations of the characteristics I have endeavored to describe. And that which was ​at first mere imitation may become at last a second nature.

Civilization has its laws, civil, religious and social, binding upon the community. Etiquette may be considered as the by-laws of civilization, binding upon each individual of the community. Arbitrary as many of these by-laws may seem, they are all founded upon some good and sufficient reason, and all intended to make our manners as agreeable and inoffensive as possible to people of refined and delicate tastes—those people, in fact, who have furthest escaped from the state of savagery natural to the race.

Good manners were perhaps originally but an expression of submission from the weaker to the stronger, and many traces of their origin still remain; but a spirit of kindliness and unselfishness born of a higher order of civilization permeates for the most part the code of politeness.

As an illustration of this, we cannot do better than cite the requirements of good breeding in regard to women. As has already been shown, it is considered perfectly proper in the more barbarous forms of society to treat woman with all contumely. In polite society great deference is paid to her and certain seemingly arbitrary requirements are made in her favor. Thus a gentleman is always expected to vacate his seat in favor of a lady who is unprovided with one. If it were possible to carry discrimination into this matter of yielding up seats, and re​quire that the young, healthful and strong of either sex should stand that the old, weak and invalid of both sexes might sit, there could be no possible doubt as to the propriety of the regulation.

The wisdom of the social law, as it really is, seems open to question. Yet it is wise and right, nevertheless. Taking men as a whole, they are better able to endure the fatigue of standing than women. Women as the mothers of the race, the bearers and nurses of children, are entitled to special consideration and care on account of the physical disabilities which these duties entail; and even if in their ordinary health they are capable of enduring fatigue, still there are times when to compel them to this endurance is cruel and unjust. Since women prefer, as a rule, to conceal their womanly weaknesses and disabilities as far as practicable, it is impossible for individual men to judge of the strength or weakness of individual women. Thus, when a man rises from his seat to give it to a woman, he silently says, in the spirit of true and noble manliness, "I offer you this, madam, in memory of my mother, who suffered that I might live, and of my present or future wife, who is, or is to be, the mother of my children." Such devotion of the stronger sex to the weaker is beautiful and just; and this chivalrous spirit, carried through all the requirements of politeness, has a significance which should neither be overlooked nor undervalued. It is the very poetry of life, and tends toward that further development of civilization ​when all traces of woman's original degradation shall be lost.

Those who would think slightingly of the importance of good manners should read Emerson, who says: "When we reflect how manners recommend, prepare and draw people together; how, in all clubs, manners make the members; how manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for the most part, his manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they convey; and what divination is required in us for the reading of this fine telegraph,—we see what range the subject has, and what relations to convenience, form and beauty. The maxim of courts is power. A calm and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embellishment of trifles and the art of hiding all uncomfortable feelings are essential to the courtier. . . . Manners impress, as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his point carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads; and you cannot rightly train to an air and manner except by making him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression. Nature for ever puts a premium on reality."

"To be truly polite," says a modern French writer, "it is necessary to be at the same time good, just and generous." The same writer goes on to say: "True politeness is the outward visible sign of those ​inward spiritual graces called modesty, unselfishness and generosity. The manners of a gentleman are the index of his soul. His speech is innocent, because his life is pure; his thoughts are direct, because his actions are upright; his bearing is gentle, because his blood and his impulses and his training are gentle also. A true gentleman is entirely free from every kind of pretence. He avoids homage instead of exacting it. Mere ceremonies have no attraction for him. He seeks not to say civil things, but to do them. His hospitality, though hearty and sincere, will be strictly regulated by his means. His friends will be chosen for their good qualities and good manners; his servants for their truthfulness and honesty; his occupations for their usefulness or their gracefulness or their elevating tendencies, whether moral or mental or political. And so we come round again to our first maxim—namely, that 'good manners are the kindly fruit of a refined nature.'"

Tennyson's definition of a true gentleman is worthy of repetition:

Lord Chesterfield declared good breeding to be ​"the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them." The same authority in polite matters says: "Good sense and good nature suggest civility in general, but in good breeding there are a thousand little delicacies which are established only by custom."

"Etiquette," says a modern English author, "may be defined as the minor morality of life. No observances, however minute, that tend to spare the feelings of others, can be classed under the head of trivialities; and politeness, which is but another name for general amiability, will oil the creaking wheels of life more effectually than any of those unguents supplied by mere wealth and station."

Then let us, in view of all this weight of opinion in favor of good breeding,