MANNERS.
"Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each—once—a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage."—EMERSON.
The late Queen Victoria had a profound sense of the importance of manners and of certain conventionalities, and the singular gift of common sense, which stood for so much in her, stands also for the significance of those things on which she laid so much stress.
Conventionality has a bad name at present, and manners are on the decline, this is a fact quite undisputed. As to conventionalities it is assumed that they represent an artificial and hollow code, from the pressure of which all, and especially the young, should be emancipated. And it may well be that there is something to be said in favour of modifying them—in fact it must be so, for all human things need at times to be revised and readapted to special and local conditions. To attempt to enforce the same code of conventions on human society in different countries, or at different stages of development, is necessarily artificial, and if pressed too far it provokes reaction, and in reaction we almost inevitably go to extreme lengths. So in reaction against too rigid conventionalities and a social ritual which was perhaps over-exacting, we are swinging out beyond control in the direction of complete spontaneity. And yet there is need for a code of conventions—for some established defence against the instincts of selfishness which find their way back by a short cut to barbarism if they are not kept in check.
Civilized selfishness leads to a worse kind of barbarism than that of rude and primitive states of society, because it has more resources at its command, as cruelty with refinement has more resources for inflicting pain than cruelty which can only strike hard. Civilized selfishness is worse also in that it has let go of better things; it is not in progress towards a higher plane of life, but has turned its back upon ideals and is slipping on the down-grade without a check. We can see the complete expression of life without conventions in the unrestraint of "hooliganism" with us, and its equivalents in other countries. In this we observe the characteristic product of bringing up without either religion, or conventions, or teaching in good manners which are inseparable from religion. We see the demoralization of the very forces which make both the strength and the weakness of youth and a great part of its charm, the impetuosity, the fearlessness of consequence, the lightheartedness, the exuberance which would have been so strong for good if rightly turned, become through want of this right impetus and control not strong but violent, uncontrollable and reckless to a degree which terrifies the very authorities who are responsible for them, in that system which is bringing up children with nothing to hold by, and nothing to which they can appeal. Girls are inclined to go even further than boys in this unrestraint through their greater excitability and recklessness, and their having less instinct of self-preservation. It is a problem for the local authorities. Their lavish expenditure upon sanitation, adornment, and—to use the favourite word—"equipment" of their schools does not seem to touch it; in fact it cannot reach the real difficulty, for it makes appeal to the senses and neglects the soul, and the souls of children are hungry for faith and love and something higher to look for, beyond the well-being of to-day in the schools, and the struggle for life, in the streets, to-morrow.
It is not only in the elementary schools that such types of formidable selfishness are produced. In any class of life, in school or home, wherever a child is growing up without control and "handling," without the discipline of religion and manners, without the yoke of obligations enforcing respect and consideration for others, there a rough is being brought up, not so loud-voiced or so uncouth as the street-rough, but as much out of tune with goodness and honour, with as little to hold by and appeal to, as troublesome and dangerous either at home or in society, as uncertain and unreliable in a party or a ministry, and in any association that makes demand upon self-control in the name of duty.
This is very generally recognized and deplored, but except within the Church, which has kept the key to these questions, the remedy is hard to find. Inspectors of elementary schools have been heard to say that, even in districts where the Catholic school was composed of the poorest and roughest elements, the manners were better than those of the well-to-do children in the neighbouring Council schools. They could not account for it, but we can; the precious hour of religious teaching for which we have had to fight so hard, influences the whole day and helps to create the "Catholic atmosphere" which in its own way tells perhaps more widely than the teaching. Faith tells of the presence of God and this underlies the rest, while the sense of friendly protection, the love of Our Lady, the angels, and saints, the love of the priest who administers all that Catholic children most value, who blesses and absolves them in God's name, all these carry them out of what is wretched and depressing in their surroundings to a different world in which they give and receive love and respect as children of God. No wonder their manners are gentler and their intercourse more disposed to friendliness, there is something to appeal to and uphold, something to love.
The Protestant Reformation breaking up these relations and all the ceremonial observance in which they found expression, necessarily produced deterioration of manners. As soon as anyone, especially a child, becomes—not rightly but aggressively—independent, argumentatively preoccupied in asserting that "I am as good as you are, and I can do without you"—he falls from the right proportion of things, becomes less instead of greater, because he stands alone, and from this to warfare against all order and control the step is short. So it has proved. The principles of Protestantism worked out to the principles of the Revolution, and to their natural outcome, seen at its worst in the Reign of Terror and the Commune of 1871 in Paris.
Again the influence of the Church on manners was dominant in the age of chivalry. At that time religion and manners were known to be inseparable, and it was the Church that handled the rough vigour of her sons to make them gentle as knights. This is so well known that it needs no more than calling to mind, and, turning attention to the fact that all the handling was fundamental, it is handling that makes manners. Even the derivation of the word does not let us forget this—manners from manieres, from manier, from main, from manus, the touch of the human hand upon the art of living worthily in human society, without offence and without contention, with the gentleness of a race, the gens, that owns a common origin, the urbanity of those who have learned to dwell in a city "compact together," the respect of those who have some one to look to for approval and control, either above them in dignity, or beneath them in strength, and therefore to be considered with due reverence.
The handling began early in days of chivalry, no time was lost, because there would necessarily be checks on the way. Knighthood was far off, but it could not be caught sight of too early as an ideal, and it was characteristic of the consideration of the Church that, in the scheme of manners over which she held sway, the first training of her knights was intrusted to women. For women set the standard of manners in every age, if a child has not learnt by seven years old how to behave towards them it is scarcely possible for him to learn it at all, and it is by women only that it can be taught. The little damoiseaux would have perfect and accomplished manners for their age when they left the apartments of the ladies at seven years old; it was a matter of course that they would fall off a good deal in their next stage. They would become "pert," as pages were supposed to be, and diffident as esquires, but as knights they would come back of themselves to the perfect ways of their childhood with a grace that became well the strength and self-possession of their knighthood. We have no longer the same formal and ceremonial training; it is not possible in our own times under the altered conditions of life, yet it commands attention for those who have at heart the future well-being of the boys and girls of to-day. The fundamental facts upon which manners are grounded remain the same. These are, some of them, worth consideration:—