How to Observe: Morals and MannersMartineau, Harriet
Science
How to Observe: Morals and Manners
Martineau, Harriet
Manners and customs; Observation (Psychology); Social psychology -- Methodology
spring mines under the thrones of their rulers, as in Spain? If
festive, are they most like an Italian carnival, where everybody laughs;
or an Egyptian holiday, when all eyes are solemnly fixed on the whirling
Dervishes? Are women there? In what proportions, and under what law of
liberty? What are the public amusements? There is an intelligible
difference between the opera at Milan, and the theatre at Paris, and a
bull-fight at Madrid, and a fair at Leipzig, and a review at St.
Petersburg.--In country towns, how is the imitation of the metropolis
carried on? Do the provincials emulate most in show, in science, or in
the fine arts?--In the villages, what are the popular amusements? Do the
people meet to drink or to read, to discuss, or play games, or dance?
What are the public houses like? Do the people eat fruit and tell
stories? or drink ale and talk politics or call for tea and saunter
about? or coffee and play dominoes? or lemonade and laugh at Punch? Do
they crowd within four walls, or gather under the elm, or spread
themselves abroad over the cricket-field or the yellow sands?--There is
as wide a difference among the humbler classes of various countries as
among their superiors in rank. A Scotch burial is wholly unlike the
ceremonies of the funeral pile among the Cingalese; and an interment in
the Greek church little resembles either. A conclave of White Boys in
Mayo, assembled in a mud hovel on a heath, to pledge one another to
their dreadful oath, is widely different from a similar conclave of
Swiss insurgents, met in a pine wood on a steep, on the same kind of
errand: and both are as little like as may be to the heroes of the last
revolution in Paris, or to the companies of Covenanters that were wont
to meet, under a similar pressure of circumstances, in the defiles of
the Scottish mountains.--In the manners of all classes, from the highest
to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in
words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality
in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up
together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded
alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the
court of Ava?--What are the manners of professional men of the society,
from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the
village barber? 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. A traveller who
bears all this in mind can hardly go wrong. Every thing that he looks
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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