Civil behavior

“ Our notion of order in civil society being taken from the analogy of subjects inanimate and dead, is frequently false; we consider commotion and action as contrary to its nature; we think that obedience, secrecy, and the silent passing of affairs through the hands of a few, are its real constituents. ”

“ The truth is palpable, that our men are not all gentlemen, nor our women all ladies, nor our children all docile and obliging. In that small and insignificant circle which is called 'Society,' which, small and insignificant as it is, gives the tone to the manners of the nation, the chief efforts seem to be, to cleanse the outside of the platter, to conceal defects by gloss and glitter. ”

“ Every one of our actions, whether we wish it or not, exercises some influence on other human beings in the social community in which we live. By our conduct we help to uphold or undermine the principles on which the various social institutions are based ”

“ Out of rights grow duties; the first of which is to live an honest, truthful, self-loyal life, acting and speaking always and everywhere in accordance with the laws of our being, as revealed in our own physical and mental organization. It is by the light of this fact that we must look upon all social requirements, whether in dress, manners, or morals. All that is fundamental and genuine in these will be found to harmonize with universal principles, and consequently with our primary duty in reference to ourselves. ”

“ The manners of the great body of the professional men must indicate much of the requisitions of the society they serve.—So, also, must every circumstance connected with the service of society: its character, whether slavish or free, abject or prosperous, comprehensive or narrow in its uses, must testify to the desires and habits, and therefore to the manners of a community, better than the conversation or deportment of any individual in the society can do. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortune wherever he goes.
Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is infested with rude, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest. Bad manners are social inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure or defend you from, and which must be intrusted to the restraining force of custom. Familiar rules of behavior should be impressed on young people in their school-days.
LESSON XIX ESSENCE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 1. Congress must meet at least once a year. ”

“ Everywhere we are commencing to hear of "social duty," of obligation to the lesser and unfortunate, of the responsibility of the leaders to the led, of the well to the sick, of the law-abiding to the criminal. ”

“ We believe that if we could have a complete record of a man's conduct in every department of life and at every stage in life—through childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, as son, brother, husband, and father, as an inferior, superior, and equal, in friendship and enmity, at work and play, in prosperity and adversity, as a citizen of a State and a member of a Church—we should have a complete expression of his character. We assume that all his actions have been produced by his character. ”

“ It treats of the relation of social psychology to political science, jurisprudence, economics, history and sociology, analyzing the psychological assumptions underlying the behavior of men living in social relations. ”

“ He may entertain, towards the different ranks of men with whom he is yoked in the state, maxims of respect and of candour: he may, in the choice of his actions, follow a principle of justice and of honour, which the considerations of safety, preferment, or profit, cannot efface. ”

“ Neighborhood feuds, personal animosities, and private differences should be blotted out; and when you return home, a manly, straightforward course of conduct will secure the respect even of your enemies. Whatever your responsibilities may be to government, to society, or to individuals, meet them like men. ”

“ It is our relations to others, that and the influence of our actions upon others, combined with the possibility of our natures being affected by the praise or censure of the social body to which we belong, which sets up the fact of responsibility. Conduct creates a social reaction, good or bad, agreeable or disagreeable, and the reacting judgment of society awakens in each of us a consciousness of responsibility, more or less acute, and more or less drastic, to society at large. ”

“ Take any condition of life in which the circumstances are for a mass of men practically alike: felony, the House of Lords, the factory, the stables, the gipsy encampment or where you please! In spite of diversity of character and temperament, the conduct and morals of the individuals in each group are as predicable and as alike in the main as if they were a flock of sheep, morals being mostly only social habits and circumstantial necessities. Strong people know this and count upon it. ”

“ You may say that nothing so forcibly illustrates a state of society as the character of its institutions for the care of those unfortunate beings whom a capricious nature has deprived of their reason. ”

“ It is settled by opinion, prejudice, and preference, not by knowledge, skill, and tact.
It is for this reason that the ethical or political problem takes precedence of the technical and persuasive problems, both in the management of subordinate institutions, and in the exer- cise of public coercion. Men are, first of all, creatures of desire. The individual may choose to use his control of his fellows in industry, in the family, in the church, for self-aggran- dizement, for political power, for social promotion, for philan- thropy, education, or religion. ”

“ The social will is brought to bear upon the individual through a variety of agencies. The family, the neighborhood, the church, the trade or profession, the political party, the social class—all these have their habits and maxims. They tend to mold to their type those whom they count among their members. The pressure which they bring to bear is felt as a sense of moral obligation. ”

“ Waiving personalities then, we take this opportunity to remark that it is possible to serve the cause of justice and to promote the common weal without begging social questions, and without joining in vulgar denunciations of social factors which after all may prove to be social blessings. ”

“ I wish some member of our Society, competent to do it full justice, would take up the subject, and enforce upon the consciences of all the social and moral wrong they are guilty of by their neglect of their duties in these respects. ”

“ But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person's life and conduct which affects only himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself, may affect others through himself ”

“ We will ever respect and inculcate virtue, both public and private, and deprecate vice in all its dazzling forms. Nothing shall ever appear in our columns to disturb the present public tranquillity, unless we see danger lurking therein, which duty requires us to expose to public view. ”

“ My dear young man, I occupy a prominent position amidst the gentry of these parts, and I have also a duty to fulfil towards society. Society has condemned you—unheard, I grant you: nevertheless, society has condemned you. ”

“ The interference of society to overrule his judgment and purposes in what only regards himself, must be grounded on general presumptions; which may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases, by persons no better acquainted with the circumstances of such cases than those are who look at them merely from without. In this department, therefore, of human affairs, Individuality has its proper field of action. ”

“ Right, Duty, Morality, Virtue, etc., of which the pulpit and the school talk so much, serve to cover nothing but pure hypotheses, vain Utopias, and unprovable prejudices; that thus ordinary social behaviour, which is apparently governed by some sort of human respect or by convention, is in reality arbitrary. ”

“ When I think of my own work and duties as a citizen, a neighbour or friend, a workman or an artist, I simply cannot think of myself as behaving or doing right if I shut out from my mind the knowledge I possess of social customs or decrees concerning what is right-doing or wrong-doing. ”

“ The situation is unique in the life of the individual affected, but not in the life of the group, the community, of which he is a part. At such times there are norms of conduct that help to stabilize our judgment, and make it certain and objective. ”

“ As long as men collectively impose their will upon the individual units, they should consider that this imposition calls for intelligence, kindliness, tolerance and a large degree of sympathy and understanding. ”

“ Shall I say, ‘Yes, gentlemen,’ and sit down here to spend my days in a kind of comfortable privacy, or shall I relinquish these prospects, and enter into a profession where my feelings will be constantly harrowed by objects either of dishonesty or misfortune; where my living must be squeezed from penury (for rich folks seldom go to law) , and my moral principle be continually at hazard? I agree with you that the law is well calculated to draw forth the powers of the mind, but what are its effects on the heart? ”

“ And in just so far as any community produces any or all of these examples of human conduct, just that far it shows not only the character of the people, but also the moral or immoral and educational influences which combined to produce the good or evil state of society. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" ”

“ All notions of propriety, decency, chastity, politeness, order, duty, right, rights, discipline, respect, reverence, coöperation, and fellowship, especially all things in regard to which good and ill depend entirely on the point at which the line is drawn, are in the mores. The mores can make things seem right and good to one group or one age which to another seem antagonistic to every instinct of human nature. ”

“ We remind our young people from time to time that conventions established in sophisticated society have usually a sound basis in social experience, and the cultivation of the minor morals of good manners develops consideration for others. ”

“ But the daily round of business and pleasure soon again fills the mind, and public duty fades into the background of life. This dulness of imagination and the mere indolence which makes us neglect to stop and think, are a chief cause of that indifference which chokes the growth of civic duty. ”

“ On the contrary, the communities in which the reason has been most cultivated, and in which the idea of social duty has been most powerful, are those which have most strongly asserted the freedom of action of the individual—the liberty of each to govern his conduct by his own feelings of duty, and by such laws and social restraints as his own conscience can subscribe to. ”

“ Instead of having our eyes opened by this cardinal error, we proceed to reason that their conduct should be made to become like our conduct, and that we should treat them and deal with them as if they were still just like us, with a history behind them similar to ours, with institutions similar to ours, and with an ethic similar to ours. ”

“ By the time we find ourselves here we are caught in a network of customs and attitudes, the major directions of our desires and interests have been stamped on our minds, and by the time we have emerged from tutelage and reached the years of discretion when we might conceivably throw our influence to the reshaping of social institutions, most of us have been so molded into the society [190] and class we live in that we are scarcely aware of any distinction between ourselves as judging, desiring individuals and our social environment. ”

“ For if fashion only be to regulate our conduct in all cases, I ask not what becomes of piety, but of humanity itself, I mean of those offices which we owe to others and to ourselves, and which reason dictates to us in every situation. ”

“ Society, therefore, must frame and enforce rules for the regulation and control of the conduct of its individual members, must even restrain them to some extent from the gratification of some of their desires. ”

“ This has been owing to carelessness, and a want of attention to the manners and behavior of others.
7. Conformity to Local Manners.
Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good-breeding, as it is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good-breeding or the place which he is at. ”

“ The growth of individual sympathies continually afforded wider scope in the judgment of personal actions, and the spread of intelligence insured the acceptance of more general laws of regulative requirements on the part of the society. ”

“ The fact is, the general had had his crosses and trials, and such often shatter the temper irretrievably, though the heart and principles may remain sound—much charity and discrimination are requisite to enable us to form a just judgment of others, to decide on the predominant hue of that mingled skein which constitutes individual character. ”