3.27. POSSIBILITY OF A NEW ETIQUETTE.
These two ideas, firstly the pupil-teacher parental idea and secondly
the democratic idea (that is to say the idea of an equal ultimate
significance), the second correcting any tendency in the first to
pedagogic arrogance and tactful concealments, do I think give, when
taken together, the general attitude a right-living man will take to his
individual fellow creature. They play against each other, providing
elements of contradiction and determining a balanced course. It seems to
me to follow necessarily from my fundamental beliefs that the Believer
will tend to be and want to be and seek to be friendly to, and
interested in, all sorts of people, and truthful and helpful and hating
concealment. To be that with any approach to perfection demands an
intricate and difficult effort, introspection to the hilt of one's
power, a saving natural gift; one has to avoid pedantry, aggression,
brutality, amiable tiresomeness--there are pitfalls on every side. The
more one thinks about other people the more interesting and pleasing
they are; I am all for kindly gossip and knowing things about them, and
all against the silly and limiting hardness of soul that will not look
into one's fellows nor go out to them. The use and justification of most
literature, of fiction, verse, history, biography, is that it lets us
into understandings and the suggestion of human possibilities. The
general purpose of intercourse is to get as close as one can to the
realities of the people one meets, and to give oneself to them just so
far as possible.
From that I think there arises naturally a newer etiquette that would
set aside many of the rigidities of procedure that keep people apart
to-day. There is a fading prejudice against asking personal questions,
against talking about oneself or one's immediate personal interests,
against discussing religion and politics and any such keenly felt
matter. No doubt it is necessary at times to protect oneself against
clumsy and stupid familiarities, against noisy and inattentive egotists,
against intriguers and liars, but only in the last resort do such
breaches of patience seem justifiable to me; for the most part our
traditions of speech and intercourse altogether overdo separations, the
preservation of distances and protective devices in general.
