The "Galateo," then, is a summary of the refined manners of the later Renaissance. For centuries such books had been written, but out of them, and from the practices of his own age, Della Casa attempted to select the essential details, and to develop, for the first time, a norm of social conduct,--in a book, above all, that should be a work of art, and should conform to all the graces and elegancies of Tuscan speech. The details are subordinated to a philosophy of manners, which is lightly sketched, on the assumption that subtle reasoning would be unintelligible to the youthful auditor to whom the precepts are theoretically addressed, but which has an importance of its own, as characteristic of the attitude of a whole epoch. When Della Casa calls good manners "a virtue, or something closely akin to virtue," he is making a mere concession to the ideals of his day. The moralists of the later Renaissance, or Catholic Reaction, felt it necessary to defend every social practice on the ground of its real or imaginary relation to virtue, as the only thing which can ever justify anything to a moralist. So the sixteenth century theorists of "honour" called honour a form of virtue; those who argued about the nature of true nobility made it to consist of virtue (a theory, indeed, as old as Menander and Juvenal); just as the moralists of the Middle Ages had justified "love" by calling it a virtue, too. For Della Casa, however, the real foundation of good manners is to be found in the desire to please. This desire is the aim or end of all manners, teaching us alike to follow what pleases others and to avoid what displeases them. This is a far cry from virtue, which in its very essence would seem to be divorced from the idea of conciliating the moods or whims of those about us; unless we assume that perhaps the slight personal sacrifice involved in yielding to such whims was the only form of virtue which a fashionable prelate might care to recognize. In order to give pleasure, we are told, it is essential to pay heed to the way a thing is done as well as to what is done; it is not enough to do a good deed, but it must be done with a good grace. That is to say, good manners are concerned with the form which actions take, as morals are concerned with their content; and from the social standpoint, the manner as well as the content of an act must be passed upon in any judgement of it. And, finally, if the desire to please is the aim of good manners, the guide, or test, or norm is common usage or custom, which no less than reason furnishes the laws of courtesy, and which in a sense may be said to be the equivalent in manners of what duty is in morals.