Theme of Courtesy, Civility, Morality, Responsibility and Control in A.G. Gardiner’s Essay On Saying Please

In A.G. Gardiner's essay On Saying Please we have the theme of courtesy, civility, morality, responsibility and control. Taken from his Many Furrows collection the reader realises after reading the essay that Gardiner may be exploring the theme of courtesy and the benefits of being courteous to others. The story of the lift-man and his pushing of the man out of the lift leaves two people to suffer. The lift-man who is likely to be charged by the police and the man himself who was pushed out of the lift. Though some critics might suggest the lack of courtesy shown by the man who was pushed out of the life is enough for the lift-man to take matters into his own hand. The lift-man only suffers by his actions. Whereas if he had taken the moral high ground and continued to be polite to the man. He may have in fact changed the man’s approach to him. By showing civility the narrator argues that more is to be gained than if one is ill-mannered or ill-tempered towards another person. If anything the lift-man has lost his peace of mind and possibly his freedom.

The narrator’s example of the conductor is also interesting as the conductor at all times appears to take the higher moral ground despite what he may think of his passengers on the. He never judges anyone and is apologetic when he makes a mistake. Something that is noticeable when he stands on the narrator’s feet. Though an accident the conductor ensures that he apologies and that no offence can be taken. This may be important as Gardiner may be suggesting that just as the lift-man lost his patience and peace of mind. The conductor on the other hand remains morally upright. He is sensible enough to know when he has made a mistake and when he must apologise. Unlike the lift-man who has taken matters personally and as a result has broken the law. Which takes precedence over any ill-mannered approach that one may receive from another person. Legality takes precedence over moral laws in the eyes of society and one is left to deal with a perceived moral injustice by themselves without the support of the law. As to whether the reader agrees with this is a different matter as loss of peace of mind over a moral slight can result in the law being broken or others who are innocent being effected.

Gardiner may also be exploring the difficulties that can be incurred by an individual when dealing with the public. The lift-man acted inappropriately while the conductor on the other hand is wise enough to know that it is better to be sweet to each passenger than to offend them. Not only does the conductor keep his peace of mind but he also ensures that he is not responsible for breaking the law. Though the conductor may feel like doing so. In contrast the lift-man and the conductor are two very different types of people. The lift-man loses control because he feels slighted in some way. That he may be deemed by the man entering the lift as being inferior to him. While the conductor on the other hand does not lose control of his emotions. Rather he continues to be polite, well-mannered and civil to all his passengers. It is by losing control that the lift-man faces the more serious charge of breaking the law. Morally the law is not responsible for how the lift-man has been treated. The law only deals with issues of a legal nature.

It is also clear to the reader that the happier of the two men is the conductor. The lift-man having lost control acts irresponsibly. Whereas if he takes the higher moral ground that is shown by the conductor. He still keeps his peace of mind and acts morally superior to the man who did not say please. Which leaves the reader realising that regardless of how one is morally treated by another person. The path to follow is not to retaliate or query an indiscretion that may have been felt but to rise above the indiscretion and maintain one’s dignity. At all times ensuring that one can keeps one’s peace of mind without having to lower themselves to the level of the perceived offender. Something which may be difficult to accomplish though worth the effort. As matters of gratitude can have an effect not only on the offended party but also to those in the offended party’s circle. Something which only leads to further disruption and misfortune to an individual. Despite themselves being innocent of any law that they perceive may be broken. In reality it is better for a person to overcome how they might feel having been slighted morally and to take the higher moral ground.
In the essay On Saying Please, Gardiner highlights the need for cultivating good manners in society. Good manners are indispensable to lead a happy and cheerful life. Civility and politeness are the exorbitant ornaments that must be possessed in social behaviour. The physical damages may got repaired and the wounds can be cured in course of time but the manners are infectious. Bad manners make life hellish. He beautifully says that ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are the courtesies that keep the machine of life oiled and graceful. The writer quotes an example from his own experience. He was highly impressed by a polite bus conductor. Once, the writer boarded a bus without money. The bus conductor did not insult him but recognized him a gentle man and issued him ticket with the promise that he should send the cost of the ticket later. The author was much impressed by the politeness and courtesy of the bus conductor. The conductor was kind to old people in the bus and made every passenger feel comfortable. The journey with such a cordial soul gave everyone a kind of ease and comfort. Thus the writer wants to replace the bad manners prevailed in the society with the good manners. He insisted that people should insist morality to those who deviates into the path of guilt and infected by bad manners. A polite word to an impolite person is the sweetest form of revenge. Politeness and gentle behaviour cannot be enforced by law but they add joy to life and makes mutual understanding easier. 

Reference:

            http://sittingbee.com/on-saying-please-a-g-gardiner

Montaigne as an Essayist

Michel De Montaigne as an Essayist

 Introduction:-

         

This great French writer deserves to be regarded as a classic, not only in the land of his birth, but in all countries and in all literatures. His Essays, which are at once the most celebrated and the most permanent of his productions, form a magazine out of which such minds as those of Bacon and Shakespeare did not disdain to help themselves; and, indeed, as Hallam observes, the Frenchman’s literary importance largely results from the share which his mind had in influencing other minds, coeval and subsequent. But, at the same time, estimating the value and rank of the essayist, we are not to leave out of the account the drawbacks and the circumstances of the period: the imperfect state of education, the comparative scarcity of books, and the limited opportunities of intellectual intercourse. Montaigne freely borrowed of others, and he has found men willing to borrow of him as freely. We need not wonder at the reputation which he with seeming facility achieved. He was, without being aware of it, the leader of a new school in letters and morals. His book was different from all others which were at that date in the world. It diverted the ancient currents of thought into new channels. It told its readers, with unexampled frankness, what its writer’s opinion was about men and things, and threw what must have been a strange kind of new light on many matters but darkly understood. Above all, the essayist uncased himself, and made his intellectual and physical organism public property. He took the world into his confidence on all subjects. His essays were a sort of literary anatomy, where we get a diagnosis of the writer’s mind, made by himself at different levels and under a large variety of operating influences.

Of all egotists, Montaigne, if not the greatest, was the most fascinating, because, perhaps, he was the least affected and most truthful. What he did, and what he had professed to do, was to dissect his mind, and show us, as best he could, how it was made, and what relation it bore to external objects. He investigated his mental structure as a schoolboy pulls his watch to pieces, to examine the mechanism of the works; and the result, accompanied by illustrations abounding with originality and force, he delivered to his fellow-men in a book.

Eloquence, rhetorical effect, poetry, were alike remote from his design. He did not write from necessity, scarcely perhaps for fame. But he desired to leave France, nay, and the world, something to be remembered by, something which should tell what kind of a man he was—what he felt, thought, suffered—and he succeeded immeasurably, I apprehend, beyond his expectations.

It was reasonable enough that Montaigne should expect for his work a certain share of celebrity in Gascony, and even, as time went on, throughout France; but it is scarcely probable that he foresaw how his renown was to become world-wide; how he was to occupy an almost unique position as a man of letters and a moralist; how the Essays would be read, in all the principal languages of Europe, by millions of intelligent human beings, who never heard of the League, and who are in doubt, if they are questioned, whether the author lived in the sixteenth or the eighteenth century. This is true fame. A man of genius belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always everywhere the same.

Literary creative works:-

          Six years later he became the Counselor in the Bordeaux Parliament. In 1571, he retired to Montaigne to take up is abode there. He decided to retire to a life of study and contemplation. During this time he read a lot, wrote a lot, dictated a lot and meditated and annotated so many books. H was a voracious reader and the work that he wrote during this period was of infinitely greater importance than anything written by him before. He joined army for some time and visited Paris and occasionally traveled for health reason and sometimes for pleasure. In falling health, he visited most of the Central and North Italy. He became famous man of letters and was elected as the Mayor of his Bordeaux. But during his office as the Mayor he continued writing essays and literary creative works.

The leader of a new school

          Montaigne wrote three books of Essays and revised them during his later life. As an essayist he was the leader of a new school in letters and morals and he wrote the first essays. He became very popular in his on country and his influence on literature was immense. He found so many followers not only in France but n England also. Even the famous essayist Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare came under his influence. In England the early popularity of Montaigne was made possible by Florio’s translation of the essays. The third book is more confident and balanced attaining a doctrine of acceptance of natural perfectly expressed in these tastessais. As, David Engel states, 

          “Montaigne essays perceive A central admission of much  Renaissance thinking: to make  A human kind the focus of  Study, to research earthly  And everyday matter; and  Not to argue about blueprints  For heavens.”

Wisdom and thought:-

          The essays of Montaigne are entertaining soliloquy on any random topic that comes into his head. He has his own style and method of writing essays. There had been so many persons with their insight but there was nobody like him with such abundance of thought. All his essays are very interesting and full of wisdom and thought. His essays are never dull, never insincere and have the genius to make the reader care for all that he cares form.

 Style and language:-

          In matter and manner of styles and even language Montaigne’s Partition in French literature is the greatest importance. His model make this respect was Plutarch and he himself admits that Plutarch treatise, Jacques Amyot was his master in point of vocabulary and style.

          Montaigne followed his models with his characteristic independence. His is the language of conversation transferred to books. His writing has no enthusiasm, no aspiration but quite contented, self-respecting and lucid. The principal characteristic of his prose style is its remarkable ease and flexibility.

 Humour:- .

          The chief merit of his essays does not lie merely in his style. It is the method or rather the manner of his thinking, of which style is the garment, which has now his great reputation and popularity and his great influence on the world. He was basically and eminently a humorist. His only parallel being perhaps Charles Lamb.

 diverse subjects

          Most of his essays have diverse subjects. Even their titles are of the most diverse character. He uses a lot of quotation in his essays every frequently. His essays reveal Montaigne as a man of insatiable intellectual curiosity, kindly and sagacious, condemning pedantry and lying , but tolerant of an easy morality After the premature death of his friend La Boetie, he is much occupied with the subject of death in his essays. Most of his essays have been translated at least five times into English. The first to attempt them was the Italian Protestant refugee John Florio, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney and possibly of Shakespeare. He deals with various theme of abstract nature in his essays. In Book I deals wit “On Idleness’, “On Liars”, “On the power of Imagination’”, “on the Education of Children, “On friendship”. In book II he discusses in detail the subjects like “On books”, On Cruelty” and In Book III he deals with ‘on Repentance”, “On the Art of conversation”.

 Point of Matter and form

          Montaigne’s main plan in writing of his essays was that of a table book or journal. The earlier essay, those of the first two books, differ from the later in length in this third book. The first two books containing about 93 essays appeared in 1580. The third book of his essays was published in 1588 together wit the former ones considerable revised. The new essays in the third book differ from the older ones in length and subject matter. By this time he was very much mature and had a lot of experience of life around him.

          The influence of this third book is remarkable both in point of matter and in point of form. He has not only perfected but has also invented al literary form. It had no fore runner in modern literature and no direct ancestor in the literature of classical time. Most of his essays are full of humour.

 Illustrations:-

           Montaigne’s’ humour proceeded out of his original and independent way of view things and he there saw how absurd and ridiculous many things in people’s life were. Along with his humour in his essay, he has given very effective illustrations from his own partial life and experience. Every illustration has its own point and effect in his general arguments like friendship, lying by people, doing nothing and idleness, on the art of conversation, people just our action and intention, and the way we educate our children and so on. He gives illustrations from the ancient times and modern times in very fascinated way. He makes his essay lively with the help of his imagination.

         

Conclusion:-

          In the four centuries since he wrote, views of Montaigne have changed much as he did himself. His contemporaries deplored his self-portrait and admired his stoical sentential. The 17th century saw mainly the skeptic, and gentleman adhering to the rules of good manners. Jean Jacques Roussean and later Romantics where drawn to his self portrait and his free pre-Neoclassical style saint Beave in the 19th  century was struck by his natural independent morality: this and the universality of hi self portrait have impressed the last century of readers. In the 20th century, he is fully recognized in all his aspects as a great writer, and his public is world while.  Most of his readers see him as friend, mentor and master of the essay of the “art of being truthful” and of the art of loving. To conclude it would be congruous for me to quote, F.P.Bowman,  “he was the 16th century  Man, and his problems Concerns and patterns Of thoughts are those  His century… Montaigne Was not a Transcendent a historical thinker.”

Critical Analysis of Selected Snobberies by Aldous Huxley

Critical Analysis of Selected Snobberies by Aldous Huxley

"Selected Snobberies" is an essay written by Aldous Huxley. Just like bird watchers make lists of the species they have seen, in this essay Huxley lists the different types of snobby people he has encountered in his life. All men are snobs (**a person with an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth who seeks to associate with social superiors and looks down on those regarded as socially inferior.) about something.

One is almost tempted to add: There is nothing about which men cannot feel snobbish. But this would doubtless be an exaggeration. There are certain disfiguring and mortal diseases about which there has probably never been any snobbery. I cannot imagine, for example, that there are any leprosy-snobs. More picturesque diseases, even when they are dangerous, and less dangerous, diseases, particularly when they are the diseases of the rich, can be and very frequently are a source of snobbish self-importance. I have met several adolescent consumption -snobs, who thought that it would be romantic to-fade away in the flower of youth, like Keats or Marie Bashkirtseff. Alas, the final stages of the consumptive fading are generally a good deal less romantic than these ingenuous young tubercle-snobs seem to imagine. To anyone who has actually witnessed these final stages,) the complacent poeticizing of these adolescents must seem as exasperating as they are profoundly pathetic. In the case of those commoner disease-snobs, whose claim to distinction is that they suffer from one of the maladies of the rich, exasperation is not tempered by very much sympathy. People who possess sufficient leisure, sufficient wealth, not to mention sufficient health, to go travelling from spa to spa, from doctor to fashionable doctor, in search of cures from problematical diseases (which, in so far as they exist at all, probably have their source in overeating) cannot expect us to be very lavish in our solicitude and pity.

Disease-snobbery is only one out of a great multitude of snobberies, of which now some, now others take pride of place in general esteem. For snobberies ebb and flow; their empire rises, declines, and falls in the most approved historical manner. What were good snobberies a hundred years ago out of fashion. Thus, the snobbery of family is everywhere on the decline. The snobbery of culture, still strong, has now to wrestle with an organized and active low-browism, with a snobbery of ignorance and stupidity unique, so far as I know, in the whole of history. Hardly less characteristic of our age is that repulsive booze-snobbery, born of American Prohibition. The malefic influences of this snobbery are rapidly spreading all over the world. Even in France, where the existence of so many varieties of delicious wine has hitherto imposed a judicious connoisseurship and has led to the branding of mere drinking as a brutish solecism, even in France the American booze-snobbery, with its odious accompaniments—a taste for hard drinks in general and for cocktails in particular—is making headway among the rich. Booze-snobbery has now made it socially permissible, and in some circles even rather creditable, for well-brought up men and (this is the novelty) well-brought up women of all ages, from fifteen to seventy, to be seen drunk, if not in public, at least in the very much tempered privacy of a party. Modernity-snobbery, though not exclusive to our age, has come to assume an unprecedented importance. The reasons for this are simple and of a strictly economic character. Thanks to modern machinery, production is outrunning consumption. Organized waste among consumers is the first condition of our industrial prosperity. The sooner a consumer throws away the object he has bought and buys another, the better for the producer. At the same time, of course, the producer must do his bit by producing nothing but the most perishable articles. “The man who builds a skyscraper to last for more than forty years is a traitor to the building trade.” The words are those of a great American contractor. Substitute motor-car, boot, suit of clothes, etc., for skyscraper, and one year, three months, six months, and so on for forty years, and you have the gospel of any leader of any modern industry. The modernity-snob, it is obvious, is this industrialist’s best friend. For modernity-snobs naturally tend to throw away their old possessions and buy new ones at a greater rate than those who are not modernity-snobs. Therefore, it is in the producer’s interest to encourage modernity snobbery. Which in fact he does do-on an enormous scale and to the tune of millions and millions a year—by means of advertising. The newspapers do their best to help those who help them; and to the flood of advertisement is added a flood of less directly paid-for propaganda in favour of modernity-snobbery. The public is taught that up -to- dateness is one of the first duties of man. Docile, it accepts the reiterated suggestion. We are all modernity-snobs now.
Most of us are also art-snobs. There are two varieties of art-snobbery- the platonic and the un-platonic. Platonic art-snobs merely ‘take an interest’ in art. Un-platonic art-snobs go further and actually buy art. Platonic art snobbery is a branch of culture- snobbery. Un-platonic art snobbery is a hybrid or mule; for it is simultaneously a sub-species of culture-snobbery and of possession snobbery. A collection of works of art is a collection of culture symbols, and culture-symbols still carry social prestige. It is also a collection of wealth symbols. For an art collection can represent money more effectively than a whole fleet of motor- cars.

The value of art-snobbery to living artists is considerable. True, most art-snobs collect only the works of the dead; for an Old Master is both a safer investment and a holier culture-symbol than a living master. But some art-snobs are also modernity-snobs. There are enough of them, with the few eccentrics who like works of art for their own sake, to provide living artists with the means of subsistence.
The value of snobbery in general, its humanistic ‘point,’ consists in its power to stimulate activity.  in its power to. A society with plenty of snobberies is like a dog with plenty of fleas: it is not likely to become comatose. Every snobbery demands of its devotees unceasing efforts, a succession of sacrifices. The society -snob must be perpetually lion- hunting; the modernity snob can never rest from trying to be up- to- date. Swiss doctors and the Best that has been thought or said must be the daily and nightly preoccupation of all the snobs respectively of disease and culture.
If we regard activity as being in itself a good, then we must count all snobberies as good:  for all provoke activity. If, with the Buddhists, we regard all activity in this world of illusion as bad, then we shall condemn all snobberies out of hand. Most of us, I suppose, take up our position somewhere between the two extremes. We regard some activities as good, others as indifferent or downright bad. Our approval will be given only to such snobberies as excite what we regard as the better activities; the others we shall either tolerate or detest. For example, most professional intellectuals will approve of culture-snobbery (even while intensely disliking most individual culture-snobs), because it compels the philistines to pay at least some slight tribute to the things of the mind and so helps to make the world less dangerously unsafe for ideas than it otherwise might have been. A manufacturer of motor cars, on the other hand, will rank the snobbery of possessions above culture-snobbery; he will do his best to persuade people that those who have fewer possessions, particularly possessions on four wheels, are inferior to those who have more possessions. And so on. Each hierarchy culminates in its own particular Pope.

References

http://foundationenglish20172018.blogspot.com/2017/01/selected-snobberies-huxley.html

http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_summary_of_'Selected_Snobberies'_by_Aldous_Huxley