论礼貌与教养

  Good manners are the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.

As the best law is founded upon reason,so are the best manners.And some lawyers have introduced unreasonable things into common law,so likewise many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners.

One principal point of this art is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men;our superior,our equals, and those below us.

  For instance,to press either of the two former to eat or drink is a breach of manners;but a farmer or a tradesman must be thus treated,or else it will be difficult to persuade them that they are welcome.

  Pride, ill nature,and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners;without some one of these defects, no man will behave himeself ill for want of experience; or of what,in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.

  I defy anyone to assign an incident wherein reason will not direct us what we are to say or do in company, if we are not misled by pride or ill nature.

  Therefore, I insist that good sense is the principal foundation of good manners; but because the former is a gift which very few among mankind are possessed of, therefore all the civilized nations of the
world have agreed upon fixing some rules for common behavoiur,best suited to their genernal customs,or fancies,as a kind of artificial good sense, to supply the defects of reson.Without which the gentlemanly part of duces would be perpetually at cuffs, as they seldom fail when they happen to be drunk,or engaged in squabbles about women or play.And, God be thanked, there hardly happens a duel in a year, which may not be imputed to one of those three motives.Upon which account, I should be exceedigly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws against the practice of dueling;because the methods are easy and many for a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour,or engage in it with innocence.And I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies,sharpers, and rakes,to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.

As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings; so they have been corruped by the persons for whose use they were contrived.For thers people have fallen into a needless and endless way of multiplying ceremonies,which have been extremely troublesome to those who practise them,and insupportable to everybody else: insomuch that wise man are often more uneasy at the over civility of these refiners, than they could possibly by in the conversations of peasants or mechanics.