m up in the
etiquette of the prevailing social custom; but they must be prevented
from falling into an absurd formality which makes the triumph of a
polite behavior to consist in a blind following of the dictates of the
last fashion-journal, and in the exact copying of the phraseology and
directions of some book on manners. One can best teach and practise
politeness when he does not merely copy the social technique, but
comprehends its original idea.--

Sec. 144. (3) But to fully initiate the youth into the institutions of
civilization one must not only call out the feelings of his heart in the
bosom of the family, not only give to him the formal refinement
necessary to his intercourse with society; it must also perform to him
the painful duty of making him acquainted with the mysteries of the ways
of the world. This is a painful duty, for the child naturally feels an
unlimited confidence in all men. This confidence must not be destroyed,
but it must be tempered. The mystery of the way of the world is the
deceit which springs from selfishness. We must provide against it by a
proper degree of distrust. We must teach the youth that he may be
imposed upon by deceit, dissimulation, and hypocrisy, and that therefore
he must not give his confidence lightly and credulously. He himself must
learn how he can, without deceit, gain his own ends in the midst of the
throng of opposing interests.

--Kant in his Pedagogics calls that worldly-wise behavior by which the
individual is to demean himself in opposition to others,
Impenetrability. By its means man learns how to "manage men." In Lord
Chesterfield's letters to his son, we have pointed out the true value of
egotism in its relation to morals. All his words amount to this, that we
are to consider every man to be an egotist, and to convert his very
egotism into a means of finding out his weak side; i.e. to flatter him
by exciting his vanity, and by means of such flattery to ascertain his
limits. In common life, the expression "having had experiences" means
about the same thing as having been deceived and betrayed.--

SECOND CHAPTER.

_Moral Culture._

Sec. 145. The truth of social culture lies in moral culture. Without this
latter, every art of behavior remains worthless, and can never attain
the clearness of Humility and Dignity which are possible to it in its
unity with morality. For the better determination of this idea
Pedagogics must refer to Ethics itself, and can