The essence of the dramatic art or the mission of the theatre is the revelation of the different grades of character and culture as exhibited in the different styles of manners, so that the spectator may assign them their respective ranks. The skill or bungling of the actor is shown by the degrees of accuracy and completeness which mark his portraitures. And the predominant ideal illustrated in his impersonations betrays the personal quality and level of the actor himself. Manners are the index of the soul, silently pointing out its rank. All grades of souls, from the bottom of the moral scale to its top, have their correspondent modes of behavior which are the direct expression of their immediate states and the reflex revelation of their permanent characters. The principle of politeness or good manners is the law of the ideal appropriation of states of feeling on recognition of their signs. Sympathy implies that when we see the sign of any state in another we at once enter into that state ourselves. Interpreting the sign we assimilate the substance signified and thus reflect the experience. Everything injurious, repulsive, or petty, pains, lessens, and lowers us. The signs of such states therefore are to be withheld. But the signs of beautiful, powerful, sublime, and blessed states enrich and exalt those who recognize them and reproduce their meaning. The refinement and benignity of any style of manners are measured by the largeness and purity of the sphere of sympathetic life it implies, the generosity of its motives, and the universality of its objects. The vulgarity and odiousness of manners are measured by the coarseness of sensibility, the narrow egotism, the contracted sphere of consciousness implied by them. Thus the person who fixes our attention on anything spiritual, calming, authoritative, charming, or godlike, confers a favor, ideally exalting us above our average level. But all such acts as biting the nails or lips, taking snuff, smoking a cigar, talking of things destitute of interest save to the vanity of the talker, are bad manners, because they draw attention from dignified and pleasing themes and fasten it to petty details, or inflict a severe nervous waste on the sensibility that refuses to be degraded by obeying their signals.