Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/493

Rh suppose that myth is more elevating to a people than sober historical fact? If it were true, we had better find some way of suppressing future Grotes, Bancrofts, and Motleys.

As to the elevation of women, it might seem at first blush that Mr. McElroy was hardly serious in his theory that the young woman who asked her mother if she should "wash for a high-neck or low-neck dress" might in time, by the practice of such hypocrisy, rise to the virtue of a full-length bath! But seriously, is there any one who can regard such dirty hypocrisy as "a social elevator"? "He that is filthy let him be filthy still."

"Nothing aided the elevation of women so much as the arrant hypocrisy which took the form of mediæval gallantry.… At first hollow and specious to the last degree—thinly varnishing a bestiality so low that it was scarcely above that of a bull seal," etc. Here our apologist makes a point worthy of consideration. It can not be denied that gallantry, even exaggerated and underlaid by bestiality, is far better than boorishness; but to say that it is a social elevator involves a fallacy, very prevalent, to be sure, but none the less a fallacy—viz., the idea that fine manners make fine people. It is generally supposed, and sometimes preached, that manners, culture, education, music, what not, elevate society. Here lies the essential fallacy of this whole article and of all similar screeds—a confounding of post hoc with propter hoc; a putting of the cart before the horse. What is it to "elevate society"? To impart expertness in playing the piano, in making bright repartees, giving and attending dinners elegantly, dancing gracefully, or even being conversant with the latest poetry and science? These are not the elevators of society, but its ornaments. The flower can not elevate the stalk. Society is elevated just so far as it lifts its face toward Mount Sinai, and no more. The ten commandments are worth more as "elevators" than all the patent contrivances which the unregenerate mind of man can conceive.

Page after page of history gives the lie to such a theory. When were manners most elegant, wit most polished, culture most a fine art? In the palaces of Italy in the middle ages, in the courts of Louis the Grand and Foolish, in the halls of Henry and Charles; and where and when was society most rotten! No. it is a great mistake to suppose that fine manners per se elevate either men or women; nor have they any moral value except so far as they are the outgrowth and sign of a true respect and consideration, the ornaments of a society which loves truth and purity and justice.

But Mr. McElroy is particularly unhappy in choosing religious hypocrisy as an illustration of his theory. Nowhere have the effects of this most despicable trait of human nature been