_Social Culture._
§ 139. The social development of man makes the beginning of practical
education. It is not necessary to suppose a special social instinct. The
inclination of man to the society of men does not arise only from the
identity of their nature, but is also in certain cases affected by
particular relations. The natural starting-point of social culture is
the Family. But this educates the child for Society, and by means of
Society the individual passes over into relations with the world at
large. Natural sympathy changes to polite behavior, and this to the
dexterous and circumspect deportment, whose truth nevertheless is first
the ethical purity which combines with the wisdom of the serpent the
harmlessness of the dove.
§ 140. (1) The Family is the natural social circle to which man
primarily belongs. In it all the immediate differences which exist are
compensated by the equally immediate unity of the relationship. The
subordination of the wife to the husband, of the children to their
parents, of the younger children to their elder brothers and sisters,
ceases to be subordination, through the intimacy of love. The child
learns obedience to authority, and in this it gives free personal
satisfaction to its parents and enjoys the same. All the relations in
which he finds himself there are penetrated by the warmth of implicit
confidence, which can be replaced for the child by nothing else. In this
sacred circle the tenderest emotions of the heart are developed by the
personal interest of all its members in what happens to any one, and
thus the foundation is laid of a susceptibility to all genuine or real
friendship.
--Nothing more unreasonable or inhuman could exist than those modern
theories which would destroy the family and would leave the children,
the offspring of the anarchy of free-love, to grow up in public
nurseries. This would appear to be very humanitarian; indeed these
socialists talk of nothing but the interests of humanity--they are never
weary of uttering their insipid jests on the institution of the family,
as if it were the principle of all narrow-mindedness. Have these
fanatics, who are seeking after an abstraction of humanity, ever
examined our foundling-hospitals, orphan asylums, barracks, and prisons,
to discover in some degree to what an atomic state of barren cleverness
a human being grows who has never formed a part of a family? The Family
is only one phase in the grand order of the ethical organization; but it
is the substantial phase from which man passively proceeds, but into
which, as he founds a family of his own, he actively returns. The child
lives in the Family in the common joy and grief of sympathy for all,
and, in the emotion with which he sees his parents approach death while
he is hastening towards the full enjoyment of existence, experiences the
finer feelings which are so powerful in creating in him a deeper and
more tender understanding of everything human.--
§ 141. (2) The Family rears the children not for itself but for the
civil society. In this we have a system of morals producing externally a
social technique, a circle of fixed forms of society. This technique
endeavors to subdue the natural roughness of man, at least as far as it
manifests itself externally. Because he is spirit, man is not to yield
himself to his immediateness; he is to exhibit to man his naturalness as
under the control of spirit. The etiquette of propriety on the one hand
facilitates the manifestation of individuality by means of which the
individual becomes interesting to others, and on the other hand, since
its forms are alike for all, it makes us recognize the likeness of the
individual to all others and so makes their intercourse easier.
--The conventional form is no mere constraint; but essentially a
protection not only for the freedom of the individual, but much more the
protection of the individual against the rude impetuosity of his own
naturalness. Savages and peasants for this reason are, in their
relations to each other, by no means as unconstrained as one often
represents them, but hold closely to a ceremonious behavior. There is in
one of Immerman's stories, "The Village Justice," a very excellent
picture of the conventional forms with which the peasant loves to
surround himself. The scene in which the townsman who thinks that he can
dispense with forms among the peasants is very entertainingly taught
better, is exceedingly valuable in an educational point of view. The
feeling of shame which man has in regard to his mere naturalness is
often extended to relations where it has no direct significance, since
this sense of shame is appealed to in children in reference to things
which are really perfectly indifferent externalities.--
§ 142. Education with regard to social culture has two extremes to
avoid: the youth may, in his effort to prove his individuality, become
vain and conceited, and fall into an attempt to appear interesting; or
he may become slavishly dependent on conventional forms, a kind of
social pedant. This state of nullity which contents itself with the
mechanical polish of social formalism is ethically more dangerous than
the tendency to a marked individuality, for it betrays emptiness; while
the effort towards a peculiar differentiation from others, to become
interesting to others, indicates power.
§ 143. When we have a harmony of the manifestation of the individual
with the expression of the recognition of the equality of others we have
what is called deportment or politeness, which combines dignity and
grace, self-respect and modesty. We call it when fully complete,
Urbanity. It treats the conventional forms with irony, since, at the
same time that it yields to them, it allows the productivity of spirit
to shine through them in little deviation from them, as if it were fully
able to make others in their place.
--True politeness shows that it remains master of forms. It is very
necessary to accustom children to courtesy and to bring them up in the
etiquette of the prevailing social custom; but they must be prevented
from falling into an absurd formality which makes the triumph of a
polite behavior to consist in a blind following of the dictates of the
last fashion-journal, and in the exact copying of the phraseology and
directions of some book on manners. One can best teach and practise
politeness when he does not merely copy the social technique, but
comprehends its original idea.--
§ 144. (3) But to fully initiate the youth into the institutions of
civilization one must not only call out the feelings of his heart in the
bosom of the family, not only give to him the formal refinement
necessary to his intercourse with society; it must also perform to him
the painful duty of making him acquainted with the mysteries of the ways
of the world. This is a painful duty, for the child naturally feels an
unlimited confidence in all men. This confidence must not be destroyed,
but it must be tempered. The mystery of the way of the world is the
deceit which springs from selfishness. We must provide against it by a
proper degree of distrust. We must teach the youth that he may be
imposed upon by deceit, dissimulation, and hypocrisy, and that therefore
he must not give his confidence lightly and credulously. He himself must
learn how he can, without deceit, gain his own ends in the midst of the
throng of opposing interests.
--Kant in his Pedagogics calls that worldly-wise behavior by which the
individual is to demean himself in opposition to others,
Impenetrability. By its means man learns how to "manage men." In Lord
Chesterfield's letters to his son, we have pointed out the true value of
egotism in its relation to morals. All his words amount to this, that we
are to consider every man to be an egotist, and to convert his very
egotism into a means of finding out his weak side; i.e. to flatter him
by exciting his vanity, and by means of such flattery to ascertain his
limits. In common life, the expression "having had experiences" means
about the same thing as having been deceived and betrayed.--