the shape of wild beasts, and savages, terrible
droughts, winds, and floods. In order to fight against these enemies,
strength was necessary, and when primitive men discovered that two were
worth twice as much as one they began to join forces. This was the
beginning of civilization and of politeness. It rose out of the oldest
instinct in the world--self-preservation.

When men first organized into groups the units were small, a mere
handful of people under a chief, but gradually they became larger and
larger until the nations of to-day have grown into a sort of world
community composed of separate countries, each one supreme in its own
domain, but at the same time bound to the others by economic ties
stronger than sentimental or political ones could ever be. People are
now more dependent on one another than they have ever been before, and
the need for confidence is greater. We cannot depend upon one another
unless we can trust one another.

The American community is in many respects the most complex the world
has ever seen, and the hardest to manage. In other countries the manners
have been the natural result of the national development. The strong who
had risen to the top in the struggle for existence formed themselves
into a group. The weak who stayed at the bottom fell into another, and
the bulk of the populace, which, then as now, came somewhere in between,
fell into a third or was divided according to standards of its own.
Custom solidified the groups into classes which became so strengthened
by years of usage that even when formal distinctions were broken down
the barriers were still too solid for a man who was born into a certain
group to climb very easily into the one above him. Custom also dictated
what was expected of the several classes. Each must be gracious to those
below and deferential to those above. The king, because he was king,
must be regal. The nobility must, _noblesse oblige_, be magnificent, and
as for the rest of the people, it did not matter much so long as they
worked hard and stayed quiet. There were upheavals, of course, and now
and then a slave with a braver heart and a stouter spirit than his
companions incited them to rebellion. His head was chopped off for his
pains and he was promptly forgotten. The majority of the people for
thousands of years honestly believed that this was the only orderly
basis upon which society could be organized.

Nebulous ideas of a brotherhood, in which each