In the first place Manners assume a settled code, a social arrangement generally agreed to. They are essentially systematic, not impulsive and incidental. An exclamation of joy uttered when I am happy may or may not be consistent with good manners. That depends on how fully it has been rationalized. I am expected to act to-day as I should wish to act to-morrow. Expression must keep in view the whole personality. Moreover, I must know how other people act and bring my action into measurable conformity with theirs. If I am frequently doing what nobody else does, I am sure to be thought rude. I am expected to understand what the social code demands. Perhaps the word “code” is too formal. It pictures a committee drawing up a plan of behavior. Of course no such committee exists. Yet an agreement there has been, a tacit understanding, of how we are to behave to one another. Any one ignorant of this understanding, or neglectful of it, is reckoned boorish and unfit for mannerly intercourse. That usage and not my own liking should direct my bearing toward others. To do something just because I like to shows me uncivilized. My commonest actions should be socialized. They are expected to express something more than my separate self, namely, my conjunct self, showing accordance with myself at other times and also accordance with the persons around me.
Is it well or usual to have these understandings written down? Are manuals of manners useful, teaching us just how to behave in this and that situation? Such books exist, but I believe few would willingly be caught reading one. Formal codes are not what we want. They are not fine enough. They study moral situations too mechanically, with too little regard for personality. From them one might pick up a few useful warnings about certain bad habits not previously noticed; but a man who followed such a manual exactly would nowhere be a welcome guest.
Conformity to a standard, however, is far from the whole of manners. Were it so, the place to find good manners would be the State Prison. A clear code is established there. Each man is told precisely what he is to do throughout the entire day. For that reason we are hardly justified in speaking of convict manners at all. A prison permits no expression of the individual life, and a second condition of good manners was “voluntary conformity to a social code.” While every child should be trained to know how those who are wisest and kindest are accustomed to meet the little circumstances of daily intercourse, still that child’s actions are worthless if they do not bear his own stamp. Is not this what we mean by a vulgar man? His manners are not an expression of himself, but of somebody else. Other men have obliterated him. An evident copy is all that remains. Fine manners play around the correct modes, departing from them here and there in little niceties. So far is the code from fettering individuality that it becomes the channel for its easiest outgo. A graceful gentleman is enviable in his freedom. He is at home anywhere. Every situation has been thought out by society beforehand. With its conclusions he has been long acquainted and in his own way swiftly adapts them to the delicate occasion at hand. There is no surprise, no awkwardness, no loss of dignity. The separate self is not altogether suppressed, but is present everywhere in the service of the conjunct.
There appears in the definition, however, a phrase which clogs it: “Within a fixed field of intercourse.” Why is this necessary and what does it mean? Manners need to be adjusted to different occasions. Those that are suitable to the shop do not fit the evening party. When we meet for the exchange of commodities or meet to exchange good wishes and general good cheer, we approach one another from different angles, and our manners should reflect them appropriately. When again we meet for discussion, the social situation is so peculiar that nothing less than a written code, a Cushing’s Manual, will insure freedom for all. Left to themselves, each person would speak as often as feeling prompted. But such rude manners are not allowed. No one must speak without appealing to the chairman and receiving his permission by word or nod. If a person opposing me in debate makes statements which strike me as absurd and intended to mislead, I am not at liberty to characterize them so. Debate could not proceed on such terms. Every one must be respectful and conform to a parliamentary standard. Such a standard would be out of place in the home. But much of the beauty of human intercourse arises from noticing these differences in the field and, with full knowledge of what is customary, adapting our manners freshly to what the occasions require.
But readers will already be asking, “Why all this pomp and circumstance? What object can make us willing to accept such constraint instead of approaching one another as we happen to feel.” That object was the fourth point in my definition: Manners are accepted “in order to insure to each person the least offense and a due opportunity for self-expression.” Expression is dear to all. At least to me it is always a pleasure to give another a piece of my mind. This may not be a pleasure to that other. If, then, we are to be social beings, there must be some security that when I am enjoying speech I cause no disturbance to others. Accordingly, the chief object of manners is a negative one, to avoid offense, to put every one at ease. Suppose the contrary; suppose A. B. asks me to meet a group of his friends; suppose I have a fancy for colored waistcoats and dress of fantastic design; suppose me not inclined to subordinate my taste to that of others, but simply to dress as I please. Should I not come as an intruder and disturber, preventing my fellow guests from thinking of anything but me? I should not be invited again to that house. To avoid such scenes we willingly accept a common costume, which nobody was ever known to admire. We go out in the evening garbed in black. We know then what to expect, securing ourselves against shock and curbing the self-asserter. That turbulent ego is the chief obstacle to society. Better give up much that is of value if we can thus be brought to conduct which shows consideration for all around.
The other part of the aim of manners, self-expression, is subordinate though desirable. Living alone, we are small; in contact with our fellow men, we enlarge ourselves. Trouble is worth taking for such a purpose. But there are dangers. Society is possible only where mutual consideration is shown. To be a social person one must be altruistically minded, continually studying another’s comfort. I am talking with two or three old friends about some experiences of our youth, when John Smith joins us. We go on talking, and soon all the company except John Smith bursts into laughter. He naturally feels shut out and we perceive that we have been rude. Manners are devised to stop such painful feelings. We leave outside social walls whatever cannot be shared by all alike.
I have been expounding here something so familiar that it is seldom mentioned or even thought of, but is usually taken as a matter of course. Yet surely it is important to perceive how wide is the extent of altruism. It is nothing occasional, calling for exceptional heroism. It is commonplace, spread all around us, attending the most elementary processes of existence. We never approach one another as separate beings, but are called on wherever we meet to put each other at ease, whatever may be the cost to ourselves. Well does Bentham write: “Good breeding is that deportment on occasions of inferior, and, when separately taken, of trivial importance by which those acts are abstained from which give annoyance to others. It is to this negative or abstinential branch of benevolence that most of the laws of good breeding are to be referred.” Christ in offering the Golden Rule seems not to be urging unusual conduct, but rather to suggest that we carry out consistently and as a plan of life a principle inwrought into the very structure of our being. We are made conjunctive. Any attempt to exhibit the varieties of altruism must take this beautiful fact as its starting-point.
No one has set forth more clearly the scope and delicacy of manners than Adam Smith in those chapters of his Moral Sentiments which treat of Propriety. He asks what feelings may properly be expressed in company and what others, equally natural, the well-mannered man suppresses. The general principle is that those which have their root in specific circumstances of the individual, as, for