CapĂtulo 1
1838.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
ADVERTISEMENT.
"The best mode of exciting the love of observation is by teaching 'How
to Observe.' With this end it was originally intended to produce, in one
or two volumes, a series of hints for travellers and students, calling
their attention to the points necessary for inquiry or observation in
the different branches of Geology, Natural History, Agriculture, the
Fine Arts, General Statistics, and Social Manners. On consideration,
however, it was determined somewhat to extend the plan, and to separate
the great divisions of the field of observation, so that those whose
tastes led them to one particular branch of inquiry might not be
encumbered with other parts in which they do not feel an equal
interest."
The preceding passage is contained in the notice accompanying the first
work in this series--Geology, by Mr. De la Bèche, published in 1835.
Thus, the second work in the series is in continuation of the plan above
announced.
CONTENTS.
PART I. REQUISITES FOR OBSERVATION. Page
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAP. I. Philosophical Requisites.
Section I. 11
Section II. 14
Section III. 21
Section IV. 27
CHAP. II. Moral Requisites 40
CHAP. III. Mechanical Requisites 51
PART II. WHAT TO OBSERVE 61
CHAP. I. Religion 68
Churches 80
Clergy 84
Superstitions 90
Suicide 94
CHAP. II. General Moral Notions 101
Epitaphs 108
Love of Kindred and Birth-place 111
Talk of Aged and Children 113
Character of prevalent Pride 114
Character of popular Idols 118
Epochs of Society 122
Treatment of the Guilty 124
Testimony of Criminals 129
Popular Songs 132
Literature and Philosophy 137
CHAP. III. Domestic State 144
Soil and Aspect of the Country 153
Markets 154
Agricultural Class 155
Manufacturing Class 157
Commercial Class 158
Health 161
Marriage and Woman 167
Children 181
CHAP. IV. Idea of Liberty 183
Police 184
Legislation 188
Classes in Society 190
Servants 192
Imitation of the Metropolis 196
Newspapers 197
Schools 198
Objects and Form of Persecution 203
CHAP. V. Progress 206
Conditions of Progress 209
Charity 213
Arts and Inventions 216
Multiplicity of Objects 218
CHAP. VI. Discourse 221
PART III. MECHANICAL METHODS 231
HOW TO OBSERVE.
MORALS AND MANNERS.
PART I.
REQUISITES FOR OBSERVATION.
INTRODUCTION.
"Inest sua gratia parvis."
"Les petites choses n'ont de valeur que de la part de ceux qui
peuvent s'ĂŠlever aux grandes."--DE JOUY.
There is no department of inquiry in which it is not full as easy to
miss truth as to find it, even when the materials from which truth is to
be drawn are actually present to our senses. A child does not catch a
gold fish in water at the first trial, however good his eyes may be, and
however clear the water; knowledge and method are necessary to enable
him to take what is actually before his eyes and under his hand. So it
is with all who fish in a strange element for the truth which is living
and moving there: the powers of observation must be trained, and habits
of method in arranging the materials presented to the eye must be
acquired before the student possesses the requisites for understanding
what he contemplates.
The observer of Men and Manners stands as much in need of intellectual
preparation as any other student. This is not, indeed, generally
supposed, and a multitude of travellers act as if it were not true. Of
the large number of tourists who annually sail from our ports, there is
probably not one who would dream of pretending to make observations on
any subject of physical inquiry, of which he did not understand even the
principles. If, on his return from the Mediterranean, the unprepared
traveller was questioned about the geology of Corsica, or the public
buildings of Palermo, he would reply, "Oh, I can tell you nothing about
that--I never studied geology; I know nothing about architecture." But
few, or none, make the same avowal about the morals and manners of a
nation. Every man seems to imagine that he can understand men at a
glance; he supposes that it is enough to be among them to know what they
are doing; he thinks that eyes, ears, and memory are enough for morals,
though they would not qualify him for botanical or statistical
observation; he pronounces confidently upon the merits and social
condition of the nations among whom he has travelled; no misgiving ever
prompts him to say, "I can give you little general information about the
people I have been seeing; I have not studied the principles of morals;
I am no judge of national manners."
There would be nothing to be ashamed of in such an avowal. No wise man
blushes at being ignorant of any science which it has not suited his
purposes to study, or which it has not been in his power to attain. No
linguist wrings his hands when astronomical discoveries are talked of in
his presence; no political economist covers his face when shown a shell
or a plant which he cannot class; still less should the artist, the
natural philosopher, the commercial traveller, or the classical scholar,
be ashamed to own himself unacquainted with the science which, of all
the sciences which have yet opened upon men, is, perhaps, the least
cultivated, the least definite, the least ascertained in itself, and the
most difficult in its application.
In this last characteristic of the science of Morals lies the excuse of
as many travellers as may decline pronouncing on the social condition of
any people. Even if the generality of travellers were as enlightened as
they are at present ignorant about the principles of Morals, the
difficulty of putting those principles to interpretative uses would
deter the wise from making the hasty decisions, and uttering the large
judgments, in which travellers have hitherto been wont to indulge. In
proportion as men become sensible how infinite are the diversities in
man, how incalculable the varieties and influences of circumstances,
rashness of pretension and decision will abate, and the great work of
classifying the moral manifestations of society will be confided to the
philosophers, who bear the same relation to the science of society as
Herschel does to astronomy, and Beaufort to hydrography.
Of all the tourists who utter their decisions upon foreigners, how many
have begun their researches at home? Which of them would venture upon
giving an account of the morals and manners of London, though he may
have lived in it all his life? Would any one of them escape errors as
gross as those of the Frenchman who published it as a general fact that
people in London always have, at dinner parties, soup on each side, and
fish at four corners? Which of us would undertake to classify the morals
and manners of any hamlet in England, after spending the summer in it?
What sensible man seriously generalizes upon the manners of a street,
even though it be Houndsditch or Cranbourn-Alley? Who pretends to
explain all the proceedings of his next-door neighbour? Who is able to
account for all that is said and done by the dweller in the same
house,--by parent, child, brother, or domestic? If such judgments were
attempted, would they not be as various as those who make them? And
would they not, after all, if closely looked into, reveal more of the
mind of the observer than of the observed?
If it be thus with us at home, amidst all the general resemblances, the
prevalent influences which furnish an interpretation to a large number
of facts, what hope of a trustworthy judgment remains for the foreign
tourist, however good may be his method of travelling, and however long
his absence from home? He looks at all the people along his line of
road, and converses with a few individuals from among them. If he
diverges, from time to time, from the high road,--if he winds about
among villages, and crosses mountains, to dip into the hamlets of the
valleys,--he still pursues only a line, and does not command the
expanse; he is furnished, at best, with no more than a sample of the
people; and whether they be indeed a sample, must remain a conjecture
which he has no means of verifying. He converses, more or less, with,
perhaps, one man in ten thousand of those he sees; and of the few with
whom he converses, no two are alike in powers and in training, or
perfectly agree in their views on any one of the great subjects which
the traveller professes to observe; the information afforded by one is
contradicted by another; the fact of one day is proved error by the
next; the wearied mind soon finds itself overwhelmed by the multitude of
unconnected or contradictory particulars, and lies passive to be run
over by the crowd. The tourist is no more likely to learn, in this way,
the social state of a nation, than his valet would be qualified to speak
of the meteorology of the country from the number of times the umbrellas
were wanted in the course of two months. His children might as well
undertake to exhibit the geological formation of the country from the
pebbles they picked up in a day's ride.
I remember some striking words addressed to me, before I set out on my
travels, by a wise man, since dead. "You are going to spend two years in
the United States," said he. "Now just tell me,--do you expect to
understand the Americans by the time you come back? You do not: that is
well. I lived five-and-twenty years in Scotland, and I fancied I
understood the Scotch; then I came to England, and supposed I should
soon understand the English. I have now lived five-and-twenty years
here, and I begin to think I understand neither the Scotch nor the
English."
What is to be done? Let us first settle what is not to be done.
The traveller must deny himself all indulgence of peremptory decision,
not only in public on his return, but in his journal, and in his most
superficial thoughts. The experienced and conscientious traveller would
word the condition differently. Finding peremptory decision more trying
to his conscience than agreeable to his laziness, he would call it not
indulgence, but anxiety; he enjoys the employment of collecting
materials, but would shrink from the responsibility of judging a
community.
The traveller must not generalize on the spot, however true may be his
apprehension--however firm his grasp, of one or more facts. A raw
English traveller in China was entertained by a host who was
intoxicated, and a hostess who was red-haired; he immediately made a
note of the fact that all the men in China were drunkards, and all the
women red-haired. A raw Chinese traveller in England was landed by a
Thames waterman who had a wooden leg. The stranger saw that the wooden
leg was used to stand in the water with, while the other was high and
dry. The apparent economy of the fact struck the Chinese; he saw in it
strong evidence of design, and wrote home that in England one-legged men
are kept for watermen, to the saving of all injury to health, shoe, and
stocking, from standing in the river. These anecdotes exhibit but a
slight exaggeration of the generalizing tendencies of many modern
travellers. They are not so much worse than some recent tourists' tales,
as they are better than the old narratives of "men whose heads do grow
beneath their shoulders."
Natural philosophers do not dream of generalizing with any such speed as
that used by the observers of men; yet they might do it with more
safety, at the risk of an incalculably smaller mischief. The geologist
and the chemist make a large collection of particular appearances,
before they commit themselves to propound a principle drawn from them,
though their subject matter is far less diversified than the human
subject, and nothing of so much importance as human emotions,--love and
dislike, reverence and contempt, depends upon their judgment. If a
student in natural philosophy is in too great haste to classify and
interpret, he misleads, for a while, his fellow-students (not a very
large class); he vitiates the observations of a few successors; his
error is discovered and exposed; he is mortified, and his too docile
followers are ridiculed, and there is an end; but if a traveller gives
any quality which he may have observed in a few individuals as a
characteristic of a nation, the evil is not speedily or easily
remediable. Abject thinkers, passive readers, adopt his words; parents
repeat them to their children; and townspeople spread the judgment into
the villages and hamlets--the strongholds of prejudice; future
travellers see according to the prepossessions given them, and add their
testimony to the error, till it becomes the work of a century to reverse
a hasty generalization. It was a great mistake of a geologist to assign
a wrong level to the Caspian Sea; and it is vexatious that much time and
energy should have been devoted to account for an appearance which,
after all, does not exist. It is provoking to geologists that they
should have wasted a great deal of ingenuity in finding reasons for
these waters being at a different level from what it is now found that
they have; but the evil is over; the "pish!" and the "pshaw!" are said;
the explanatory and apologetical notes are duly inserted in new
editions of geological works, and nothing more can come of the mistake.
But it is difficult to foresee when the British public will believe that
the Americans are a mirthful nation, or even that the French are not
almost all cooks or dancing-masters. A century hence, probably, the
Americans will continue to believe that all the English make a regular
study of the art of conversation; and the lower orders of French will be
still telling their children that half the people in England hang or
drown themselves every November. As long as travellers generalize on
morals and manners as hastily as they do, it will probably be impossible
to establish a general conviction that no civilized nation is
ascertainably better or worse than any other on this side barbarism, the
whole field of morals being taken into the view. As long as travellers
continue to neglect the safe means of generalization which are within
the reach of all, and build theories upon the manifestations of
individual minds, there is little hope of inspiring men with that spirit
of impartiality, mutual deference, and love, which are the best
enlighteners of the eyes and rectifiers of the understanding.
Above all things, the traveller must not despair of good results from
his observations. Because he cannot establish true conclusions by
imperfect means, he is not to desist from doing anything at all. Because
he cannot safely generalize in one way, it does not follow that there is
no other way. There are methods of safe generalization of which I shall
speak by-and-by. But, if there were not such within his reach, if his
only materials were the discourse, the opinions, the feelings, the way
of life, the looks, dress, and manners of individuals, he might still
afford important contributions to science by his observations on as wide
a variety of these as he can bring within his mental grasp. The
experience of a large number of observers would in time yield materials
from which a cautious philosopher might draw conclusions. It is a safe
rule, in morals as in physics, that no fact is without its use. Every
observer and recorder is fulfilling a function; and no one observer or
recorder ought to feel discouragement, as long as he desires to be
useful rather than shining; to be the servant rather than the lord of
science, and a friend to the home-stayers rather than their dictator.
One of the wisest men living writes to me, "No books are so little to be
trusted as travels. All travellers do and must generalize too rapidly.
Most, if not all, take a fact for a principle, or the exception for the
rule, more or less; and the quickest minds, which love to reason and
explain more than to observe with patience, go most astray. My faith in
travels received a mortal wound when I travelled. I read, as I went
along, the books of those who had preceded me, and found that we did not
see with the same eyes. Even descriptions of nature proved false. The
traveller had viewed the prospect at a different season, or in a
different light, and substituted the transient for the fixed. Still I
think travels useful. Different accounts give means of approximation to
truth; and by-and-by what is fixed and essential in a people will be
brought out."
It ought to be an animating thought to a traveller that, even if it be
not in his power to settle any one point respecting the morals and
manners of an empire, he can infallibly aid in supplying means of
approximation to truth, and of bringing out "what is fixed and essential
in a people." This should be sufficient to stimulate his exertions and
satisfy his ambition.
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Title: How to Observe: Morals and Manners
Author: Harriet Martineau
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HOW TO OBSERVE.
-----
MORALS AND MANNERS.
BY
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
"HĂŠlas! oĂš donc chercher, oĂš trouver le bonheur?
----Nulle part tout entier, partout avec mesure."
VOLTAIRE.
"Opening my journal-book, and dipping my pen in my ink-horn, I
determined, as far as I could, to justify myself and my
countrymen in wandering over the face of the earth."
ROGERS.
LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO. 22, LUDGATE STREET.