Customs

“ One type of manners and customs and modes of living ends here and another type of features and temperament, food and dress, customs and habits begins — we enter Europe. Not only this, but here also is the great centre of that historical admixture of colours, races, civilisations, culture, and customs, which extending over many centuries has led to the birth of modern civilisation. ”

“ Distinctly marked national customs, which one would naturally expect to find in such an isolated part of the world, are sought for in vain, and again and again the stranger remarks that everything has been learned and is only a veneer. ”

“ The common people, who went up into the interior to trade, fell in with their customs with a degree of plasticity and an air of gaiety and full assent, which no other foreigners have, at least to the same extent, shown. ”

“ EVOLUTION OF THE MORES
All modern social institutions arise from the evolution of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the conventions of today are the modified and expanded customs of yesterday. What habit is to the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into folkways or tribal traditions—mass conventions. From these early beginnings all of the institutions of present-day human society take their humble origin. ”

“ The Manners and Customs of the Middle Ages:--this subject is of the greatest interest, not only to the man of science, but to the man of the world also. In it, too, "we retrace not only one single period, but two periods quite distinct one from the other." In the first, the public and private customs offer a curious mixture of barbarism and civilisation. We find barbarian, Roman, and Christian customs and character in presence of each other, mixed up in the same society, and very often in the same individuals. Everywhere the most adverse and opposite tendencies display themselves. ”

“ Thus the Nation, whose native land had for centuries been in the centre of the world’s power, civilization, and commerce, now, under the superintending Hand of Providence, was scattered everywhere, East and West, North and South, bearing about with them their peculiar customs and institutions, and diffusing a knowledge of the Law and the Prophets. ”

“ Foreigners of many nations accompany their speech with action; but why should their example have more influence upon us than ours upon them? Customs are not to be changed but for better. Let those who desire to reform us show the benefits of the change proposed. ”

“ This difference of feeling, sentiment, and custom, exists in those countries that are so near each other. If you go to France, you find that they walk over the customs and manners of England, as unworthy of their notice. ”

“ The Candor and Good Nature of Englishmen exemplified in their deliberate, cautious, and charitable way of characterizing the Customs, Manners, Constitution, and Religion of Neighbouring Nations, of which their own Authors are every where produced as Vouchers: their moderate, equitable, and humane mode of governing States dependent on them ”

“ It gives them nations, instead of neighborhoods, to look upon and think about. They catch110 glimpses of the international connections of their trades, of the universal application of law, of the endless variety of life, of diversities of race, of a world teeming with men like themselves, and yet full of strange customs, puzzled by dim omens, stained by crime, ringing with voices familiar and unfamiliar. ”

“ They become the more difficult of solution, considering the difference in the customs prevailing in different parts of the country — nay, as we find even in the same part of the country such a wide divergence of customs among different castes and families. ”

“ We must believe that the known cases illustrate the irrational and incongruous origin of many folkways. In civilized history also we know that customs have owed their origin to "historical accident,"—the vanity of a princess, the deformity of a king, the whim of a democracy, the love intrigue of a statesman or prelate. ”

“ Grouped with a healthy regard for the freedom of individual needs there are enough separate races, speaking separate languages and abiding by separate customs, to make the many-colored map of Europe seem one primary hue by comparison. ”

“ When one 179goes to European countries or into the Far West, or into India or China, he meets certain customs and certain prejudices which he is bound to respect and, to a certain extent, comply with. ”

“ We have direct evidence, in many present or recent customs, of so-called civilized or half-civilized nations, that the barbarous customs described in "The Origin of Civilization," and in the books of many travellers, are not the original and special inventions of modern savages merely, but that similar customs prevailed among our progenitors. ”

“ The natural peculiarities of any region give rise to customs and practices of a corresponding peculiarity, so that where the same circumstances reappear, we find the same means of controlling them invented by different nations. ”

“ It is only through the establishment and transmission of customary standards that one generation is in any way superior to its predecessors. Customs, in civilized life, include all the established effective ways of civilization, its arts, its sciences, its industries, and its useful modes of coöperation. ”

“ I wonder if all these distinctions between the manners and customs of the various groups, convey to your untravelled mind one-thousandth part of the interest they possess to us, who have actually lived among so many different races. I fear it is impossible that they should. ”

“ Example, education, traditional usages, prescriptive customs, the approbation and disapprobation of our fellow-men, all these are foreign agencies, and they exert such a potent influence on each of us, and so shape and modify our original dispositions, as to render it in the highest degree difficult to determine accurately what are the native or primary, and what the acquired or secondary elements in our moral constitution. ”

“ Our travellers and our exquisites imitate the outside of foreign customs without discrimination, just as in the absurd fashion of not eating fish with a knife,borrowed from the French, who do it because they have no knives fit for use. ”

“ The tribe is ruled by a king, who is not like an Eastern despot, but has about him a council of chiefs, and is bound by the themistes, the traditional customs. There is, besides, the agora, or popular assembly, where debates take place among the chiefs, and to which their decisions, or rather the decision of the king, on whom it devolves finally to determine every thing, are communicated. Public speaking, it is seen, is practiced in the infancy of Greek society. (2) Customs. People live in hill-villages, surrounded by walls. Life is patriarchal, and, as regards the domestic circle, humane. ”

“ How much more would the publick be benefitted by the remarks of travellers on the manners and customs of countries, would they divest themselves of their prejudices, passions, and partialities, and confine themselves to the relation of simple truths. ”

“ The foregoing system of the adat, or customs of the country, being digested chiefly for the use of the natives, or of persons well acquainted with their manners in general, and being designed, not for an illustration of the customs, but simply as a standard of right, the fewest and concisest terms possible have been made use of, and many parts must necessarily be obscure to the bulk of readers. ”

“ Even the history of the most ignorant and barbarous nations that have ever peopled the globe, may furnish something, either in their modes of government, in their forms of religion, or in their manners, customs, and laws, which is calculated to amuse or instruct. ”

“ The dress, the customs, the people, the Government, have all been transformed under the influence of European civilization; and these changes have exerted more or less influence in all parts of the Empire. ”

“ The noblesse, and the policy of the central government receive adequate treatment, while the story of the lower classes, the traders, parish priests, peasants, burghers, cossacks, and serfs, their life, customs, local government, religion, and the great national movements which affect them, is told in detail and in the light of a full knowledge derived from long residence among them. ”

“ Therefore, since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor, to obtain good customs. ”

“ All customs, be they old or new, are no other but the effects and issues of trades and commerce with foreign nations; but all commerce and affairs with foreigners ... are made by the absolute power of the king ”

“ Though unconsciously, the man conforming Page 420 to a custom is considering his fellows, and the values and traditions which have become current among them.
Customs, moreover, are the first invasion of moral chaos. They establish enduring standards; they give common and permanent bases of action. ”

“ We may even admit, with the French philosopher, that without the perpetual use of the imitative faculty there could be no distinctive nationalities; for, is it not by successive generations imitating their parents that national customs, usages, and languages are formed, and communities consolidated so as to afford each other mutual support? ”

“ The sciences, the literature, the customs, the lessons of experience, the skill, the spirit of every country, exercise an influence upon every other. In this peaceful interchange of the products of the intellect, in this constant passing to and fro of the people of different countries of the civilized world, we find in each land a system of law peculiar to the country itself, and answering to what I believe to be a just description of all laws which regulate the relations of individuals to each other, in being a formulation of the custom of the [Pg 190] civil community. ”

“ What is the customs o your country."
"The customs o't, my dame," he says,
"Will ill a gentle lady please.
"Seven king's daughters has our king wedded,
An seven king's daughters has our king bedded.
"But he's cutted the paps frae their breast-bane,
An sent them mourning hame again. ”

“ A part of this culture is of native origin; a part, in every European nation probably by far the larger part, is of foreign origin, and has been acquired by the acceptance of ideas and beliefs from without its borders, by the copying of institutions, customs, arts, from foreign models. ”

“ How wise are they who take advantage of the opening given by English laws and customs to rise above the every-day detail of mere society, and take their share in politics, literature, or great works of benevolence, which, if we add to them the learned professions, take in all the objects really worth attention. ”

“ When we are dealing with customs it is well to remember that customs superficially alike may spring from quite different social organizations, and their real intentions may be divergent or even opposite: in short, they may have nothing in common but external resemblance. ”

“ In this way our customs will, or at least may, be introduced, together with the articles of our faith, with the utmost ease, both because of their gentleness, and because of their great intelligence, and mental capacities, wherein they have a clear and marked advantage over us. ”

“ These are local customs, festival customs, ceremonial customs and games.
Local customs are frequently very extraordinary, and have sometimes been preserved only at one or two places. But they are none the less valuable to the folk-lorist on this account; for it may be that some particular local circumstance has affected the practice of the custom and kept it alive, while, in other places, it has died out. ”

“ The same may be said of social customs, including habitations, dress, arms, food, as well as ceremonies, beliefs, and laws, in themselves fascinating subjects of study, placed here in the fourth rank, not as possessing any want of interest, but as contributing comparatively little to our knowledge of the natural classification and affinities of the racial divisions of man. ”

“ Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters: and his circumstances or his character may be uncustomary. ”

“ Certainly some of the customs of this country are exceedingly strange, and we should not have believed them had we not again and again asked the same questions from different individuals and always got the same reply. ”

“ Customary Law consisteth of certain laudable customs used in some private country, intended first to begin upon good and reasonable considerations, as gavelkind, which is all the male children equally to inherit, and continued to this day in Kent, where it is only to my knowledge retained, and nowhere else in England. ”

“ So the mores which have been developed to suit the system of great secular states, world commerce, credit institutions, contract wages and rent, emigration to outlying continents, etc., have become the norm for the whole body of usages, manners, ideas, faiths, customs, and institutions which embrace the whole life of a society and characterize an historical epoch. ”

“ The firm hold with which long-established customs, combined with convenience, fix themselves upon the reason of men, and the pertinacity with which nations cling to their old habits, refusing, for the sake of old associations, alterations of the most obvious utility, is altogether marvellous. ”

“ Arts, customs, institutions, and traditions extend beyond the boundaries of languages and serve to obscure them, and the admixture of strains of blood has obscured primitive ethnic divisions, if such existed. ”

“ But side by side with these customs, necessary to the life of societies and the preservation of the race, other desires, other passions, and therefore other habits and customs, are evolved in human associations. ”