How to Observe: Morals and MannersMartineau, Harriet
Science
How to Observe: Morals and Manners
Martineau, Harriet
Manners and customs; Observation (Psychology); Social psychology -- Methodology
must pronounce the Ashantee worshipper as guilty as Greenacre: the
Hindoo son a parricide, not only in fact, but in the most revolting
sense of the term: Sand, a Thurtell: and the Georgian planter such a
monster of tyranny as a Sussex farmer would be if he set up a
whipping-post for his labourers, and sold their little ones to gipsies.
Such judgments would be cruelly illiberal. The traveller who is
furnished with the more accurate philosophy of Conscience would arrive
at conclusions, not only more correct, but far less painful; and,
without any laxity of principle, far more charitable.
So much for one instance of the advantage to the traveller of being
provided with definite principles, to be used as a rallying point and
test of his observations, instead of mere vague moral notions and
general prepossessions, which can serve only as a false medium, by which
much that he sees must necessarily be perverted or obscured.
SECTION IV.
The traveller having satisfied himself that there are some universal
feelings about right and wrong, and that in consequence some parts of
human conduct are guided by general rules, must next give his attention
to modes of conduct, which seem to him good or bad, prevalent in a
nation, or district, or society of smaller limits. His first general
principle is, that the law of nature is the only one by which mankind at
large can be judged. His second must be, that every prevalent virtue or
vice is the result of the particular circumstances amidst which the
society exists.
The circumstances in which a prevalent virtue or vice originates, may or
may not be traceable by a traveller. If traceable, he should spare no
pains to make himself acquainted with the whole case. If obscure, he
must beware of imputing disgraces to individuals, as if those
individuals were living under the influences which have made himself
what he is. He will not blame a deficiency of moral independence in a
citizen of Philadelphia so severely as in a citizen of London; seeing,
as he must do, that the want of moral independence is a prevalent fault
in the United States, and that there must be some reason for it. Again,
he will not look to the Polish peasant for the political intelligence,
activity, and principle which delight him in the log-house of the
American farmer. He sees that Polish peasants are generally supine, and
American farmers usually interested about politics; and that there must
be reasons for the difference.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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