The origin and development of the moral ideas

The rules of politeness and good manners refer to all sorts of social intercourse and vary indefinitely in detail. They tell people how to sit or stand in each other’s presence, or how to pass through a door; a Zulu would be fined for going out of a hut back first.79 They prescribe how to behave at a meal; the Indians of British Columbia consider it improper to talk on such an occasion,80 and it appears that in England also, in the fifteenth century, “people did not hold conversation while eating, but that the talk and mirth began with the liquor.”81 Politeness demands that a person should never interrupt another while speaking;82 or that he should avoid contradicting a statement;83 or, not infrequently, that he should rather tell a pleasant untruth than an unpleasant truth.84 At times it requires the use of certain phrases, words of thanks, flattery, or expressions of self-humiliation. In Chinese there is “a whole vocabulary of words which are indispensable to one who wishes to pose as a ‘polite’ person, words in which whatever belongs to the speaker is treated with scorn and contempt, and whatever relates to the person addressed is honourable. The ‘polite’ Chinese will refer to his wife, if driven to the extremity of referring to her at all, as his ‘dull thorn,’ or in some similar elegant figure of speech.”85

Politeness enjoins the performance of certain ceremonies upon persons who meet or part. The custom of salutation is of world-wide prevalence, though there are certain savages who are said to have no greetings except when they have learnt the practice from the whites.86 As a ceremony prescribed by public opinion it is an obligatory tribute paid to another person’s “self-feeling,” whatever be the original nature of the act which has been adopted for the purpose. The form of salutation has sometimes been borrowed from questions springing from curiosity or suspicion. Among the Californian Miwok, when anybody meets a stranger he generally salutes him, “Whence do you come? What are you at?”87 The Abipones “would think it quite contrary to the laws of good-breeding, were they to meet any one and not ask him where he was going”;88 and a similar question is also a very common mode of greeting among the Berbers of Southern Morocco. Very frequently a salutation consists of some phrase which is expressive of goodwill. It may be an inquiry about the other person’s health or welfare, as the English “How are you?” “How do you do?” Among the Burmese two relatives or friends who meet begin a conversation by the expressions, “Are you well? I am well,” if they have been some time separated; whereas those who are daily accustomed to meet say, “Where are you going?”89 The Moors ask, “What is your news?” or, “Is nothing wrong?”

The ordinary salutation of the Zulus is, “I see you, are you well?” after which the snuffbox, the token of friendship, is passed round.90 Among several tribes of California, again, a person when greeting another simply utters a word which means “friendship.”91 The goodwill is often directly expressed in the form of a wish, like our “Good day!” “Good night!” Among the Hebrews the salutation at meeting or entering another’s house seems at first to have consisted most commonly in an inquiry after mutual welfare,92 but in later times “Health!” or “Peace to thee!” became the current greeting.93 According to the Laws of Manu, a Brâhmana should be saluted, “May thou be long-lived, O gentle one!”94 The Greeks said χαῖρε (“Be joyful!”); the Romans, Salve! (“Be in health!”) especially on meeting, and Vale! (“Be well!”) on parting. The good wish may have the form of a prayer. The Moors say, “May God give thee peace!” “May God give thee a good night!” and the English “Good-bye” and the French Adieu are prayers curtailed by the progress of time. But there is no foundation for Professor Wundt’s assertion that “the words employed in greeting are one and all prayer formulæ in a more or less rudimentary state.”95 A salutation may, finally, be a verbal profession of subjection, as the Swedish “Ödmjukaste tjänare,” that is, (I am your) “most humble servant.”

Salutations may consist not only in words spoken, but in conventional gestures, either accompanied by some verbal expression or performed silently.96 They may be tokens of submission or reverence, as cowering, crouching, and bowing. Or they may originally have been signs of disarming or defencelessness, as uncovering some particular portion of the body. Von Jhering suggests that the offering of the hand belongs to the same group of salutations, its object being to indicate that the other person has nothing to fear;97 but in many cases at least handshaking seems to have the same origin as other ceremonies consisting in bodily contact. Salutatory gestures may express not only absence of evil intentions but positive friendliness; among respectable Moors it is a common mode of greeting that each party places his right hand on his heart to indicate, as Jackson puts it, “that part to be the residence of the friend.”98 Various forms of salutation by contact, such as clasping, embracing, kissing, and sniffing, are obviously direct expressions of affection;99 and we can hardly doubt that the joining of hands serves a similar object when we find it combined with other tokens of goodwill. Among some of the Australian natives, friends, on meeting after an absence, “will kiss, shake hands, and sometimes cry over one another.”100 In Morocco equals salute each other by joining their hands with a quick motion, separating them immediately, and kissing each his own hand.

The Soolimas, again, place the palms of the right hands together, carry them then to the forehead, and from thence to the left side of the chest.101 But bodily union is also employed as a method of transferring either blessings or conditional curses, and it seems probable that certain salutatory acts have vaguely or distinctly such transference in view. Among the Masai, who spit on each other both when they meet and when they part, spitting “expresses the greatest goodwill and the best of wishes”;102 and in a previous chapter I have endeavoured to show that the object of certain reception ceremonies is to transfer a conditional curse to the stranger who is received as a guest.103 On the same principle as underlies these ceremonies, handshaking may be a means of joining in compact, analogous to a common meal104 and the blood-covenant.105