Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/96

44 Hence it is, that as much as this kind of frankness is commended, so much that of the common people is despised, which has nothing but truth and simplicity for its object.

In fine, the education of monarchies requires a certain politeness of behaviour. Men born for society, are born to please one another; and a person that would break through the rules of decorum, by shocking those he conversed with, would so far lose the public esteem as to become incapable of doing any good.

But politeness, generally speaking, does not derive its original from so pure a source. It rises from a desire of distinguishing ourselves. It is pride that renders us polite: we feel a pleasing vanity in being remarked for a behaviour that shews in some measure we are not meanly born, and that we have not been bred up with those who in all ages have been considered as the scum of the people.

Politeness, in monarchies, is naturalised at court. One man excessively great renders every body else little. Hence that regard which is paid to our fellow subjects; hence that politeness, which is as pleasing to those by whom, as to those towards whom, it is practised; because it gives people to understand, that a person actually belongs, or at least deserves to belong, to the court.

A court air consists in quitting a real for a borrowed greatness. The latter pleases the courtier more than his own. It inspires him with a certain disdainful modesty which shews itself externally, but whose pride diminishes insensibly in proportion to its distance from the source of this greatness. Rh