It is considered a sound rule not to sacrifice reality for appearances.
To be good is held as better than only to seem good. Appearances, in as
far as they may serve, and often do serve, as a means of cloaking some
evil reality, are not, upon the whole, in good esteem among mankind.
It is a word seldom mentioned without some expression of contempt or
reprobation. Yet it may be questioned if we could, in this world, quite
dispense with appearances.
To lead a life free of gross improprieties is undoubtedly the first
requisite. If, however, while doing this, we allow much of our conduct
to be interpretable into something opposite, is the result a matter of
indifference to society? The thoughtless lady who flirts, or, as the
common phrase is, allows herself latitudes, and who is yet studious to
be substantially correct, answers, Yes; or perhaps she goes no farther
than to say, Being in my own mind conscious of perfect rectitude, I
have nothing to say to society on the subject, and it has no title
to interfere, so long as I commit no actual transgression. This is
specious, and seems to exclude reply. Most people give way to its
force, yet do not act or speak as if they felt it to be quite right.
It is wrong in this way: such conduct tends to become a screen to
actual error; for if the virtuous appear to act exactly as the vicious
do, how can we know where vice exists? It is our duty even to appear
pure and irreproachable, because, when all that are pure present only
the symptoms of purity in their external behaviour, it is the more
difficult for the erring to conceal their guilt. They are forced into
hypocrisy, which is not merely a homage to virtue, but a means of
recruiting her ranks from the bands of vice, seeing that there is an
additional pain and trouble in being wicked. All hypocrites would be,
or have the advantages attendant on being, what they pretend to be.
Can we doubt that, under a system of perfect freedom, they would be
something worse than they are?
It thus appears that there is a philosophy in those little decorums of
society which minds of a bold and sprightly character are so apt to
deride, and which many persons, without the least ill intention, are so
often seen to disregard. Every great cause must have its banner. Under
every banner there will be a few rogues and cowards. But how much worse
would it be with an army to have no ensign at all? It might then have
the whole force of the enemy mingling in its ranks, and unresistedly
hewing it in pieces.
When we hear of people keeping up appearances, we usually either
condemn or laugh. Very often the condemnation or the ridicule is just,
but not always so. There is much to object to in endeavours to attain
or keep up a style of living different from that which is suitable
to our actual means or our actual place in society. Let this error be
abandoned to the unsparing satire of those who delight in exposing
human weakness and frailty. But all keeping up of appearances is not of
this nature. A family is often invested with a rank which its income
will scarcely support in proper style, yet which it must support, or
forfeit that rank altogether. Even in particular professions there is
this hard necessity. The style is part of the very profession itself,
something without which it cannot be practised. There is also such a
thing as a decline of worldly prosperity, where to appear poor would
be to become so even more rapidly than is strictly unavoidable. In
such cases, if a family does not basely, by incurring debt, throw
the actual suffering upon others--if it only pinches itself at one
time, that it may make a decent show at another--if it only spares
in its own grosser necessaries, that it may appear on a footing of
equality with those of its own nominal social rank, or escape the pity
which it is heavenly to give, but bitter to receive, there surely is
no offence committed. I must own I never could exactly see grounds
for the mirth which prosperous citizens will sometimes indulge in
regarding the 'appearances' of the struggling professional man, or the
fallen-off family of rank. Such efforts, seeing that they involve much
self-denial, that they tend to what is elegant rather than to what is
gross, to what is elevated rather than to what is low, seem to me more
creditable than otherwise. In our external life, observances become
habits, and habits become principles. We all of us live not merely for
and in ourselves, but partly for and in others. To be threatened with
a fall from our sphere or special field of life, is to anticipate one
of the greatest of evils, a sort of half death. It is not wonderful
that men and women should make such a struggle to avoid it. But in fact
efforts of this kind are connected with some of the best properties of
our nature. The father eager to give his family the benefits of his own
rank--the children willing to submit to any sacrifice, rather than see
their parents lowered in the eyes of their equals: the whole resolvable
into that sense of decency and sensibility to public esteem, without
which this social scene would be a howling wilderness. No, there is
surely no proper subject of merriment or of reprobation in these things.
There are in this empire two kinds of cities and towns--those which
are passing through a career of mercantile prosperity, and those which
rest at one point of prosperity, or are perhaps slowly falling off.
It is not uncommon to hear the denizens of the parvenu town indulging
in mirth at the expense of the meagre and ill-supported gentility
which they observe in their ancient neighbour. Perhaps this neighbour
has only a cathedral, or the county courts, to look to as a source of
income: it keeps up a brave spirit, but cannot give anything better
than tea-drinkings. Its better class are formal and refined in their
manners, and even its poor have a clean delicate air about them,
dressing much better than they eat or drink. All this is matter of
mirth to the unthinking members of the more thriving community, who
feel that, if they are less refined, they have at least more of the
substantialities of life at their command. It seems to be a great
prize to them that the genteel town is only a town of 'appearances.'
But is there in this any true ground for so much self-congratulating
merriment? I will admit there is, when it is established that the
material is superior to the spiritual--that gross, full-feeding habits
are more laudable than a taste for neat apparel--that a profuse, and
often ostentatious expenditure, unregulated by taste, is better than
a tasteful moderate expenditure, in which a sacrifice of immediate
appetites is made for the sake of some ultimate gratification in the
esteem of our fellow-creatures. It is a point of ambition with a
Scottish artisan to have a suit of superfine black clothes in which to
go to church and attend funerals. It may be said that this is keeping
up an appearance beyond his station; but if he only saves for this
appearance what a less intellectual operative of some other country
would spend on excesses in meat and drink, enjoyed out of sight, is
he not rather to be admired than condemned? I have known something of
country towns, where there is considerable poverty within doors and
in reality, while at the same time the bulk of the population make a
principle of appearing as well dressed as possible; and my feeling on
the subject is, that to laugh at such things is to laugh at virtue
itself. The whole moral being of the individual anchors perhaps in
some frail remains of well-saved clothes, or in the possession of some
tolerable house handed down from some more comfortable ancestor. Take
away this poor fiction from them, and their self-respect is diminished.
They feel that they are regarded as falling into a lower category, and
into that lower category they fall accordingly. No one, having a just
sense of human frailty, would wantonly remove, or wish removed, even
such slight edifications as these, but, on the contrary, rejoice to see
them carefully maintained.
To sum up--It will always be proper to exercise the greatest care in
discriminating between what is good and what is bad in appearances.
Their being necessary to the support of morality, will not make them
more amiable in those who lack the reality of goodness. Their being
respectable in persons to whom loss of external grade or the failure to
support it is social death, will not justify the ambitious citizen in
forfeiting the real comfort of his family in an effort to live in the
manner of those who possess better means. But, after the possibility of
such abuses is admitted, and the fact itself deprecated, we must still
keep in view that one of the essentials of a good life is a regard to
Appearances.