Politeness, where it is loved and cultivated with simplicity for its own
sake, gives a repose and ease of action to the moral being which may be
compared to the comfort and satisfaction resulting to the physical
frame from habits of personal cleanliness. The moral tone is elevated
and refined by the one, as the animal functions are purified and renewed
by the other.
As in civil life liberty to the whole results from the subjection of
the evil passions of all to legal enactments, so in social life every
individual is free and at ease in proportion as all the rest are subject
to the laws of courtesy. Ease and freedom are the result of order,
and it is as incorrect to call rude Manners free and easy, as to call
licentiousness liberty. No man is truly free who allows his sphere of
life to impinge upon that of his neighbor. Fluids are said to move
easily because each particle is without angular projections that prevent
it from gliding smoothly with or by its companions; and in like manner
the ease of society depends on the polish of each individual. If the
units of society seek their own selfish indulgence, without regard to
the rights of the neighbor, the whole must form a mass of grating atoms
in which no one can be free, or at ease.
Indifference, ill-temper, selfishness, envy and arrogance, all positive
vices, are the characteristics that ultimate themselves in ill-manners.
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