Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/97

Rh and straightway call him Honorable,&mdash;such divinity doth hedge all semblance of power.

Self-denial and abstinence lie at the bottom of etiquette and good manners. If you would be moral, says Kant, you must "act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings," and Goethe teaches that "there is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep, moral foundation."

Fine manners, though but the shell of the individual, are, to society, the best actions of the best men crystallized into a mode; not only the best thing, but the best way of doing the best thing. Good society is, or ought to be, the society of the good; but fashion is more than good society, or good actions; it is more than wealth, or beauty, or genius, and so arbitrary in its sway that, not unfrequently, the form absorbs the substance, and a breach of decorum becomes a deadly sin.

Thus we see in every phase of development the result of a social evolution; we see men coming and going, receiving their leaven from the society into which by their destiny they are projected, only to fling it back into the general fund interpenetrated with their own quota of force. Meanwhile, this aggregation of human experiences, this compounding of age with age, one generation heaping up knowledge upon another; this begetting of knowledge by knowledge, the seed so infinitesimal, the tree now so rapidly sending forth its branches, whither does it tend? Running the eye along the line of progress, from the beginning to the end, the measure of our knowledge seems nearly full; resolving the matter, experience assures us that, as compared with those who shall come after us, we are the veriest barbarians. The end is not yet; not until infinity is spanned and eternity brought to an end, will mankind cease to improve.

Out of this conglomeration of interminable