HABIT AND PBOGEESS. 247 ment of means to ends in the management of the implements devoted to that purpose. It is as such that they offend us, not because they are unusual, for the contrary is too often the case. On this point we can appeal to a most incontrovertible sort of evidence, that which is supplied by the respective attitudes of the parties concerned. When what we call ill-bred and well-bred people are brought together and seated at the same table it is the taste of the latter only that is offended ; and the same remark seems to be true of persons belonging to nationalities occupying different grades of civilisation, but holding certain general notions of decorum in common. The ordinary Cappado- cian mode of employing a knife, fork and napkin is profoundly repugnant to the Lesbians, whose manner of eating is on the other hand regarded with indifference or even with admiration but never with disgust by their Continental neighbours. It is the same with pronunciation and grammar. There is a certain standard recognised by all educated persons, and of this a rational account can be given. It is habitually disregarded by the majority of the people, yet correct speaking never offends them, however unfamiliar it may be to their ears. It is only misplaced aspirates and violated concords that are visited with ridicule or contempt. As Mrs. Carlyle would have said, the reciprocity is all on one side. Custom merely strengthens a feeling that it did not create. Of course there are cases in which disregard of a purely arbitrary rule calls forth expressions of dislike, sometimes amounting to actual hostility, among those by whom it is habi- tually observed. But here a breach of etiquette, in itself innocent enough, is presumed to argue either want of education or unfa- miliarity with the society in which painful impressions are most carefully avoided and pleasurable impressions most sedulously fostered. Thus in the last analysis we find not blind adherence to custom as such but a most reasonable preference of good to bad customs among some, and a certain vis inertice retarding or preventing their adoption by others. The argument that progress or change of any kind is distasteful to great numbers, perhaps to the great majority of human beings, would have more weight were it addressed to an inhabitant of Jupiter or Saturn without the means of discriminating between Europeans and Asiatics. As it is, we might as well argue that yellow or dark skins and straight or woolly hair were more essen- tially human than fair complexions and wavy locks, because the latter belong to a minority of the earth's population. Moreover, in determining the general character of human nature it is less legiti- mate to reason from the east to the west than vice versd. For, while the one has been constantly moving the other has not been always stationary, and even now offers some symptoms of awakening from its secular torpor. Meanwhile the enthusiast for progress rests his hopes on the vitality of liberal ideas in Europe and America, even should they be destined never to extend beyond those regions. So with the alleged conservatism of women. Put
