A TREATISE ON GOOD MANNERS AND GOOD BREEDING
Jonathan Swift
Good manners is the art of making tho people easy with whom we conver.
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.
As the best law is founded upon reason, so are the best manners. And as some lawyers have introduced unreasonable things into common law, so likewi many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners.
One principal point of this art is to suit our behavior to the three veral degrees of men; our superiors, our equals, and tho below us.
教学的概念 For instance, to press either or a tradesman must be thus treated, or breach of manners; but a farmer or a tradesman must be thus treated, or el it will be difficult to persuade them that they are welcome.快速消除眼袋
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Pride, ill nature, and want of n, are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of the defects, no man will behave himlf ill for want of experience; or of what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.好吃的素菜
I defy any one to assign an incident wherein reason will not direct us what we are to say or do in the company, if we are not misled by pride or ill nature.
高考的祝福语 Therefore I insist that good n is the principal foundation of good manners; but becau the former is a gift which very few among mankind are possd of, therefore all the civilized nations of the world have agreed upon fixing some rules for common behavior, best suited to their general customs, or fancies, as a kind of artificial good n, to supply the defects of reason. Without which the gentlemanly part of dunces would be perpetually at cuffs, as they ldom fail when they happen to be drunk, or engaged in squabbles about women or play. And, God be thanked, there hardly happens a duel in a year, which may not be imputed to one of tho three motives. Upon which account, I should be exceedingly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws against t
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he practice of dueling; becau the methods are easy and many for a wi man to avoid a quarrel with honor, or engage in it with innocence. And I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.
As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of tho who have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for who u they were contrived. For the people have fallen into a needless and endless way of multiplying ceremonies; which have been extremely troublesome to tho who practice them, and insupportable to everybody el: insomuch that wi men are often more uneasy at the over civility of the refiners, than they could possibly be in the conversations of peasants or mechanics.
The impertinencies of this ceremonial behavior are nowhere better en than at tho tables where ladies preside, who value themlves upon account of their good breeding; where a man must reckon upon passing an hour without doing any one thing he has a mi股权激励方案与合伙人制度
nd to; unless he will be so hardy to break through all the ttled decorum of the family. She determines what he loves best, and how much he shall eat; and if the master of the hou happens to be of the same disposition, he proceeds in the same tyrannical manner to prescribe in the drinking part: at the same time, you are under the necessity of answering a thousand apologies for your entertainment. And although a good deal of this humor is pretty well worn off among many people of the best fashion, yet too much of it still remains, especially in the country; where an honest gentleman assured me, that having been kept four days, against his will, at a friend’s hou, with all the circumstances of hiding his boots, locking up the stable, and other contrivances of the like nature, he could not remember, from the moment he came into the hou to the moment he left it, any one thing, wherein his inclination was not directly contradicted; as if the whole family had entered into a combination to torment him.
But, besides all this, it would be endless to recount the many foolish and ridiculous accidents I have obrved among the unfortunate prolytes to ceremony. I have en a duchess fairly knocked down, by the precipitancy of an officious coxcomb running to sa
ve her the trouble of opening a door. I remember, upon a birthday at court, a great lady was utterly desperate by a dish of sauce let fall by a page directly upon her head-dress and brocade, while she gave a sudden turn to her elbow upon some point of ceremony with the person who sat next her. Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, who politics and manners were much of a size, brought a son with him, about thirteen years old, to a great table at court. The boy and his father, whatever they put on their plates, they first offered round in order, to every person in the company; so that we could not get a minute’s quiet during the whole dinner. At last their two plates happened to encounter, and with so much violence, that, being china, they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the company with wet sweetmeats and cream.
There is a pedantry in manners, as in all arts and sciences; and sometimes in trades. Pedantry is properly the overrating any kind of knowledge we pretend to. And if that kind of knowledge be a trifle in itlf, the pedantry is the greater. For which reason I look upon fiddlers, dancing-manners, heralds, masters of the ceremony, etc. to be greater pedants than Lipsius, or the elder Scaliger. With the kind of pedants, the court, while I knew it,
was always plentifully stocked; I mean from the gentleman usher (at least) inclusive, downward to the gentleman porter; who are, generally speaking, the most insignificant race of people that this island can afford, and with the smallest tincture of good manners, which is the only trade they profess. For being wholly illiterate, and conversing chiefly with each other, they reduce the whole system of breeding within the forms and circles of their veral offices; and as they are below the notice of ministers, they live and die in court under all revolutions, with great obquiousness to tho who are in any degree of favor or credit, and with rudeness or insolence to everybody el. Whence I have long concluded, that good manners are not a plant of the court growth: for if they were, tho people who have understandings directly of a level for such acquirements, and who have rved such long apprenticeships to nothing el, would certainly have picked them up. For as to the great officers, they are a transient body, who have no better a title to good manners than their neighbors, nor will probably have recour to gentlemen ushers for instruction. So that I know little to be learnt at court upon this head, except in the material circumstance of dress; wherein the authority of the maids of honor must indeed be allowed to be almost equal to that of a favorite actress.
