Perhaps we can judge this modern change without too great an exaggeration of its importance, if we bear in mind the paradox of the modern wit, that "dirt is evil chiefly as evidence of sloth, but the fact remains that the classes that wash most are those that work least." I have already pointed out that one of the limitations of that code of good breeding which we have inherited from the Renaissance and which it is almost the mission of modern life to destroy, is that it looks merely to the comfort of those around us at any accidental point of time or place, often if not always at the expense of other groups, other classes, and wider interests. Those who inveigh against democracy as destructive of the "finer graces" of life have hit upon what is, for good or evil, the very essence of its reformative programme. A modern idealist sums up this newer attitude when he says of the old code that it asks us "rather to let a million pine than hurt the feelings of a single man." But wholly apart from this, codes and rules have no more justification in the art of life than in the arts of poetry and painting. Each individual soul must express its past and its present, its inheritance and its aspiration, in its own way; and it is as futile and vulgar to apply "rules" in the estimate of a life as it is in the criticism of a poem or a picture. Children and novices and immature societies may obtain practical guidance from the empirical observations of those who have had experience, but in order to create a real life of their own, a real social atmosphere, they must reach the point where the very rules that nurtured them no longer apply. To disregard every rule of good breeding is the symbol of real attainment in the creative art of living. But this is no place to wage a battle for old codes or new ones. The "Galateo" describes habits and impulses that for centuries have moved the souls of men, dictated their conduct, given them pleasure and pain, and that probably for centuries will continue to do so. Nothing that has so stirred men and women, however trifling it may seem, can fail to hold a little human interest for those who call themselves Humanists. J. E. S. New York, February, 1914. Galateo of Maister John Della Casa, Archebishop of Benevento. Or rather, A Treatise of the Manners and Behaviours, it behoveth a Man to use and eschewe, in his Familiar Conversation. A Worke very necessary & profitable for all Gentlemen, or Other. First written in the Italian Tongue, and now done into English by Robert Peterson, of Lincolnes Inne Gentleman. Satis, si sapienter. Imprinted at London for Raufe Newbery dwelling in Fleetestreate litle above the Conduit. An. Do. 1576. THE DEDICATION