Politeness does not consist in any outside mannerisms, nor is it simply kindness. It consists, as a wiser than I has said, in treating every person as if she were what she might be, instead of what she actually is. A person tells us what we know not to be true. We do not contradict her, which would be treating her as if she intended to tell a lie, though we may be convinced that such was the actual case, but we treat her as if she intended to be a scrupulously truthful person. We speak not to her then, but to a non-existing ideal of her, when we ask her politely whether she may not be mistaken, or when we do not answer at all, thereby assuming that her statement was correct. Or a self-important salesman insists, very impolitely, because he thereby implies that we know nothing of what we desire, that the piece of goods which we are examining is of charming colors, tastefully combined, and is in fact the very thing which we most need. If we answered him as our natural impulse prompts, “according to his folly,” we simply treat him as what he actually is, and we are as impolite as he. The woman who has been educated into true politeness answers him, if she answer him at all, as if he were what he actually is not, a better judge of her needs than she herself is. And so with all cases of politeness.
It is manifest that no manual of manners or etiquette of polite society can be of the slightest avail, and all such would seem beneath notice here, were it not evident from the number of such books published, and the number sold, that there is a large demand for them.
Nothing to an observer can be a more comic sight than the result produced on manners by their faithful study. It is sufficient for us to try to imagine the man who of all our acquaintance is the most truly and exquisitely polite, endeavoring to follow out the cast-iron rules contained in these books, for us to appreciate the difference between the politeness which springs from within and that which is only a shabby veneering. Of American mothers and American teachers what proportion are, by having attained a mastership in this art of politeness, fully able to educate our girls into it? Are we not a sadly uneducated people?
But there is still something else to be done. In the unrestrained and affectionate intercourse of the family, the girl has not felt the necessity of concealing in any degree her real self. She is under an observation that is intelligent and sympathetic, and she is sure of the kindest construction of all her actions. If she talks or laughs loudly, for instance, it is not supposed that this springs from a desire to attract attention, but from the natural, innocent overflowing of healthful spirits, and a forgetfulness of self. But her social education cannot be called finished till she has in some measure been taught to distrust others. She must learn that society is not one vast family, abounding in sympathy, and always ready to put the kindest construction on her words and actions. She must learn this sooner or later. Shall she learn it by mortifying experiences, by finding herself often in absurd and annoying positions, by having her confidence betrayed, and the outspoken utterances resulting from her very purity of thought made the occasion of coarse remarks and suspicions; or shall she be guarded against all these by being taught that she must not give all the world credit for being as pure and innocent as she? We must so educate her that she will not lightly give her confidence, or show to uninterested persons too much of her real self. In other words, we must educate her into a reserve, into the gentle, unoffending dignity which holds all but the nearest and dearest at a little distance from herself. This is not teaching deceit. It is only teaching what must be learned, the means of “possessing one's self in peace.” The majority of our girls who talk and laugh loudly on Broadway, do not do this to attract attention. They do it simply because their education on this point is not yet completed. A slight indication of the same defect in education is the profusion of endearing pet names, which we find in the published catalogues of girl students. If the girls themselves do not realize the impropriety of thus publishing to a world of careless strangers, the names which family affection has bestowed upon them, should not the teachers who compile the catalogues, direct and overrule their uneducated taste? It is only necessary to imagine the catalogue of Harvard or Yale, printed in the same manner, to make manifest, even to the girls themselves, the want of proper dignity displayed. Men, in their intercourse with the world, learn sooner than women, by the rough teaching of experience, the necessity of fending in their inner selves from the outer world. But both boys and girls might be saved much time and pain, if parents and guardians recognized more clearly that this was a part of education.
But in all the training of the will on this social side, we must never forget, and here lies the greatest problem for the educator, that individuality is not to be sacrificed, that it must be most jealously preserved. We have only to remember what has been so often said before, that education consists, not in destroying, but in training. The will is only to be directed, never to be broken, or even weakened, and she who endeavors to do this is working in the interest of evil and not of good, while she who should, if it were possible, succeed in it, would have, as the result of her efforts, only a total ruin instead of a fair and stately edifice. It may often, indeed, become her duty to strengthen it, for without a strong will, the moral nature will fall a prey to the forces of evil as surely and quickly as the body, deprived of the life principle, rushes to corruption and disintegration.
Moral Culture.—In the previous division, the will has been supposed to be guided by the educator, but now another guide is to be followed, for it becomes the work of the educator to teach that “nothing in the world has any absolute value except Will guided by the Right.” We must presuppose before we can produce any great effect in this direction a considerable education of the intellect, in order that the child may have some intelligent idea of the Right, otherwise we shall be leaving her to the saddest mistakes. The African chief, who, being convinced that it was right for him, before baptism, to dispense with one of his two wives, for both of whom he had a sincere affection, performed, so far as he knew, a highly virtuous action in eating one of them, and no girl whose intellect has not been well trained can safely be delivered over to the direction of her own conscience. The Spanish and the French mothers tacitly recognize the truth of this proposition, by the constant surveillance which they exercise over their daughters. It is contrary to the whole spirit of our American life to be so watchful. By so much the more, then, ought we to see to it, that the conscience, to whose custody American mothers hand over their daughters' actions, be an enlightened one. No merely prescriptive external rules, borrowed from society when the mothers were girls, can fully answer the purpose. These may do for communities that are comparatively stationary, but in our rapidly moving American life, our girls must have a more stable guide.
It is not often recognized that the cause of much chafing and worry in American homes—a chafing and a worry which is scarcely found in Europe—is only this truly American phenomenon of rapid national growth.[25] The mother who was educated only thirty years ago finds herself unable to understand her daughter's restlessness. As great a distance divides the thought of the mother and daughter in America as in Germany lies between the great-grandmother and the great-granddaughter, and these latter named relatives are, by a wise provision of Providence, not often permitted to come into contact at the time when the girl begins to assert her own individuality, and hence, the chafing referred to above, is saved. If Methuselahs were not exceptional in these days in America, who can estimate to how great a degree the unavoidable friction of family society would be increased!
We must never, in this question of education, forget for one moment the peculiar conditions which surround our girls, from the peculiarities of national government and society. Again, then, it is, in this point of view, of imperative importance that our girls be allowed, nay, forced, to complete their intellectual education.
We have now so to educate the girl that she shall do what is right, simply because it is right, and not because it is useful or politic so to do; that she shall abstain from what is wrong, simply and, only because it is wrong, and not because it will be harmful to her if she do not. These two statements would, however, be fully expressed by the first one, for it is evident that if she always do what is right she will never be able to do what is wrong, and positive education is much better than negative, and an active, better than a passive state of mind. In the first years of the little girl's life this lesson can be impressed upon her only by example, and fortunate have those of us been who, both in grandmother and mother, from our earliest childhood up, can remember no single instance, however trifling, of deviation from obedience to the “stern daughter of the voice of God.” Though at first we did not know what the power was, we felt, through all our childish consciousness, that there was a power behind the throne from which our laws emanated, whose voice was authority itself. Some of us may even recall the impression made upon us, as clear now as in the long gone years, when we distinctly formulated in words, with a certain sense of satisfaction, the conviction that “even grown-up people cannot do as they please;” and yet, that the power which prevented this doing as they pleased was neither fashion, nor custom, nor the opinion of society.
Let the little girl be so educated that “while she praises and rejoices over, and receives into her soul, the good, and becomes noble and good, she will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of her youth, even before she is able to know the reason of the thing, and when Reason comes, she will recognize and salute her as a friend with whom her education has made her long familiar.”[26]