How to Observe: Morals and MannersMartineau, Harriet
Science
How to Observe: Morals and Manners
Martineau, Harriet
Manners and customs; Observation (Psychology); Social psychology -- Methodology
and rapacity.--We may pass over the pride of caste in India, of royal
race in Africa, and the wild notions of Caribbean and Esquimaux dignity,
which are almost as painful to contemplate as the freaks of pride in
Bedlam. There is quite enough to look upon in the most civilized parts
of the earth.--The whole national character of the Spaniards might be
inferred from their particularly notorious pride; the quarterings of
German barons are a popular joke; the French pride of military glory is
an index to the national morals of France; while, in the United States,
the pride of Washington and of territory is oddly combined and
contrasted. Nothing can be more indicative of the true moral state of
the Americans; they hang between the past and the future, with many of
the feudal prepossessions of the past, mingled with the democratic
aspirations which relate to the future. The ambition and pride of
territory belong to the first, and their pride in the leader of their
revolution to the last: he is their personification of that moral power
to which they profess allegiance. The consequences of this arbitrary
union of two kinds of national pride may be foreseen. The Americans
unite some of the low qualities of feudalism with some of the highest of
a more equal social organization. Without the first, slavery, cupidity,
and ostentation could not exist to any great extent; without the others,
there could not be the splendid moral conflict which we now see going on
in opposition to slavery, nor the reverence for man which is the
loveliest feature of American morals and manners.
From the aristocratic pride of the English the stranger might draw
inferences no less correct. If it is found that there is scarcely a
gamekeeper or a tradesman among us who is not stiffened with prejudices
about rank; that gossips can tell what noblemen pay, and which do not
pay, their tradesmen's bills; that persons who have never seen a lord
can furnish all information about the genealogy and intermarriages of
noble families; that every class is emulating the manners of the one
above it; and that democratic principles are held chiefly in the
manufacturing districts, or, if in country regions, among the tenantry
of landlords of liberal politics;--the moral condition of such a people
lies, as it were, mapped out beneath the eye of the observer. They must
be orderly, eminently industrious, munificent in their grants to rulers,
and mechanically oppressive to the lowest class of the ruled; nationally
complacent, while wanting in individual self-respect; reverentially
inclined towards the lofty minority, and contemptuously disposed
towards the lowly majority of their race; a generous devotion being
advantageously mingled, however, with the select reverence, and a kindly
spirit of protection with the gross contempt. Such, to the eye of an
observer, are the qualities involved in English pride. Upon this moral
material, everywhere diffused, should the traveller observe and reflect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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