The Culture of Politeness

1895

M. Brunetiero of the French academy contributes an article on "Education and Instruction," in which he makes remarks that are worth quoting, to the effect that the first interest of the French community being to endure and to continue on the same lines, the treatment of the young must be to a certain extent subordinate to this general theory and not wholly based on the individual development of the boy and girl.

French politeness, for instance, is an integral attribute of France as we have always known her, and has partly molded her literary expressions and contributed to the wide diffusion of her language. "Thus the well-bred man is he who controls himself in the interest of others. The idea of a certain amount of constraint is still at the base of continental education. . . . To breed up or to train a child is to habituate it to repress such of its movements, to restrain such of its moods, to keep to itself such of its sentiments as might annoy or alarm others. The general interest, which in the sphere of manners is the interest of the 'world,' is therefore recognized as superior to that of the individual, and as sufficiently important to require each of us to subordinate, to submit, to bend his own nature, and so we come to the formula of individual constraint in favor of a social gain."