The Works of Henry Fielding, vol. 12

by Henry Fielding

In this respect man stands, I conceive, distinguished from, and superior to, all other earthly creatures; it is this privilege which, while he is inferior in strength to some, in swiftness to others; without horns or claws or tusks to attack them, or even to defend himself against them, hath made him master of them all. Indeed, in other views, however vain men may be of their abilities, they are greatly inferior to their animal neighbours.

With what envy must a swine, or a much less voracious animal, be surveyed by a glutton; and how contemptible must the talents of other sensualists appear, when opposed, perhaps, to some of the lowest and meanest of brutes! but in conversation man stands alone, at least in this part of the creation; he leaves all others behind him at his first start, and the greater progress he makes the greater distance is between them.

Conversation is of three sorts. Men are said to converse with God, with themselves, and with one another. The two first of these have been so liberally and excellently spoken to by others, that I shall at present pass them by and confine myself in this essay to the third only; since it seems to me amazing that this grand business of our lives, the foundation of everything either useful or pleasant, should have been so slightly treated of, that, while there is scarce a profession or handicraft in life, however mean and contemptible, which is not abundantly furnished with proper rules to the attaining its perfection, men should be left almost totally in the dark, and without the least light to direct, or any guide to conduct them, in the proper exerting of those talents which are the noblest privilege of human nature and productive of all rational happiness; and the rather as this power is by no means self-instructed, and in the possession of the artless and ignorant is of so mean use that it raises them very little above those animals who are void of it.

As conversation is a branch of society, it follows that it can be proper to none who is not in his nature social. Now, society is agreeable to no creatures who are not inoffensive to each other; and we therefore observe in animals who are entirely guided by nature that it is cultivated by such only, while those of more noxious disposition addict themselves to solitude, and, unless when prompted by lust, or that necessary instinct implanted in them by nature for the nurture of their young, shun as much as possible the society of their own species. If therefore there should be found some human individuals of so savage a habit, it would seem they were not adapted to society, and, consequently, not to conversation; nor would any inconvenience ensue the admittance of such exceptions, since it would by no means impeach the general rule of man's being a social animal; especially when it appears (as is sufficiently and admirably proved by my friend the author of An Enquiry into Happiness) that these men live in a constant opposition to their own nature, and are no less monsters than the most wanton abortions or extravagant births.

Again; if society requires that its members should be inoffensive, so the more useful and beneficial they are to each other the more suitable are they to the social nature, and more perfectly adapted to its institution; for all creatures seek their own happiness, and society is therefore natural to any, because it is naturally productive of this happiness. To render therefore any animal social is to render it inoffensive; an instance of which is to be seen in those the ferocity of whose nature can be tamed by man. And here the reader may observe a double distinction of man from the more savage animals by society, and from the social by conversation.

But if men were merely inoffensive to each other, it seems as if society and conversation would be merely indifferent; and that, in order to make it desirable by a sensible being, it is necessary we should go farther and propose some positive good to ourselves from it; and this presupposes, not only negatively, our not receiving any hurt, but positively, our receiving some good, some pleasure or advantage, from each other in it, something which we could not find in an unsocial and solitary state; otherwise we might cry out with the right honourable poet—[Footnote: The Duke of Buckingham.]

Give us our wildness and our woods,
Our huts and caves again.

The art of pleasing or doing good to one another is therefore the art of conversation. It is this habit which gives it all its value. And as man's being a social animal (the truth of which is incontestably proved by that excellent author of An Enquiry, &c., I have above cited) presupposes a natural desire or tendency this way, it will follow that we can fail in attaining this truly desirable end from ignorance only in the means; and how general this ignorance is may be, with some probability, inferred from our want of even a word to express this art by; that which comes the nearest to it, and by which, perhaps, we would sometimes intend it, being so horribly and barbarously corrupted, that it contains at present scarce a simple ingredient of what it seems originally to have been designed to express.

The word I mean is good breeding; a word, I apprehend, not at first confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; nor were the qualifications expressed by it to be furnished by a milliner, a taylor, or a perriwig-maker; no, nor even by a dancing-master himself. According to the idea I myself conceive from this word, I should not have scrupled to call Socrates a well-bred man, though, I believe, he was very little instructed by any of the persons I have above enumerated. In short, by good-breeding (notwithstanding the corrupt use of the word in a very different sense) I mean the art of pleasing, or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse. I shall contend therefore no longer on this head; for, whilst my reader clearly conceives the sense in which I use this word, it will not be very material whether I am right or wrong in its original application.

Good-breeding then, or the art of pleasing in conversation, is expressed two different ways, viz., in our actions and our words, and our conduct in both may be reduced to that concise, comprehensive rule in scripture—Do unto all men as you would they should do unto you. Indeed, concise as this rule is, and plain as it appears, what are all treatises on ethics but comments upon it? and whoever is well read in the book of nature, and hath made much observation on the actions of men, will perceive so few capable of judging or rightly pursuing their own happiness, that he will be apt to conclude that some attention is necessary (and more than is commonly used) to enable men to know truly what they would have done unto them, or, at least, what it would be their interest to have done.