For there never can be a real and lasting democ-racy in belief, opinion and ideal. The mass must always lag behind the leaders, since it takes a generation or two for the ideas of the old leaders to permeate any society. Now and then a great leader finds a great following in his own lifetime, but his leadership rarely involves a new principle. There will always be a few ground breakers, behind them a few straggling followers, and far, far behind, the great mass of mankind.
This digression aside, to be popular, agreeable and entertaining are both aims and weapons. Most of us would infinitely rather be liked than disliked, and with some it is a passion and a weakness. But to be popular, to be a good fellow, is an extraordinarily useful trait when combined with firm purposes and good intelligence. The art of life is to please, though its business is achievement and success, and here the art may further the business. Manners, courtesy and certain of the abilities, such as musical talent, story telling and humor are cultivated largely, though not wholly, out of the desire to please.
Manners and courtesy are really standardized methods of behavior, which are to adjust us in a pleasing way to our superiors, equals and inferiors, and to the various conventional situations of life. Naturally these will vary greatly in different ages and different countries. A democracy acknowledging in theory no superiors will insist that every man be called "sir" and every woman "madam," whereas an aristocracy laughs at that. In reality there is no democracy anywhere, and so we address differently the woman of the mansion and the woman of the hovel, The mistress of the house calls her maid by her first name but would wonder what the world is coming to if the maid became as familiar. In a limited sense, manners and courtesy are conventional ways of doing things, as the way of living, the tipping of the hat, the form of greetings, the way of eating, but these conventions have great value to the majority of people as evidencing breeding and training or the lack (superiority or inferiority), and also as removing doubt and choice, so that things run smoothly and without contradiction. In a more noble sense, manners and courtesy prescribe conduct in order to proscribe offense to the self-valuation of others. Convention says, "Address people as if they were your equals at least; don't contradict brusquely because that implies their inferiority or stupidity; avoid too controversial topics since bitterness and humiliation may thus arise; do not notice defects or disabilities for the same reason; do not brag or be too conspicuous, since to boast of superiority is to imply the inferiority of others, and they will dislike you," etc. We tend to dislike and hate those who make us feel inferior, except under those special circumstances where ***-love, awe and admiration enter to make a certain inferiority desirable or befitting. So a large part of manners and courtesy concern themselves with the formulae of conduct which avoid this result to others, and we are also enjoined to conduct ourselves so that others will not regard us as inferior. We speak of a man as a "low person" if he eats with his knife, and very few things so humiliate us as the knowledge that we have behaved in an unmannerly way. One of the great purposes, then, is to be conventional, to behave, dress and "look" according to an accepted standard, one that is laid down for age, *** and social station. There are people to whom convention is truly almost holy, and true to our principle of variability, there are others who hate convention.
Because many writers have shot shafts of satire and ridicule at convention and custom, and because of the enormous reading public, the artificial nature of convention has been emphasized to that large part of the community that desires to be different merely for the sake of being different, and there is built up a conventional unconventionality. It has become the mark of the artist, the great in spirit, to be unconventional (at least in novels), and so there are a hundred "unconventional" poseurs to one genuinely free in spirit. Anything that becomes a dogma or a cult is not unconventional, for it is the standard or the custom of a group. Most Bohemians, so-called, are poseurs and conventionalized to their marrow. And most of the really unconventional are "freaks," "odd sticks" whose grotesque individualities cannot conform. But in the mass of the unconventional one finds here and there, like nuggets of gold in sand, the true reformers of the world.
The "poseurs" in custom have their analogies in the pompous, over-dignified and over-important; the affected, in a word.
Affectation is felt to be a disharmony between the pose and the inner values or an attempt to win superiority or "difference" of a superior kind by acting. In either case it excites ridicule, hatred or disgust, and shafts at it form part of the stock in trade of the satirist, humorist and indeed every portrayer of life. What men demand of each other is sincerity, and even where the insincerity is merely a habitual pose it arouses hostile feeling which expresses itself all the way from criticism to the overt act.
