A PLEA FOR THE MINOR MORALIST A BOOK containing thoughts on behaviour, although it may be dull, is perhaps not so actively displeasing as the behaviour to which no thought is given, and which from sheer indifference offends at every step against what we may call the minor moralities of social intercourse. There is no attempt made here to deal with any comprehensive scheme of morals. It is not for minor moralists to seek on broad lines for any common basis of ethics, or to formulate the principles of any special creed: enough if they can deal to some purpose not with the seven deadly sins but with the hundred and fifty peccadilloes of which the daily sum makes life almost as disagreeable. Here is no question of light ing a beacon on the lofty summits: what is proffered is but a hand-candlestick which may show some of the details of the level road. For it is not enough to know when we set out the general direction in which we must bend our steps; we ought also to be warned whereabouts on the road there are pitfalls and stumbling-blocks- stumbling-blocks, moreover, which when we fall over them hurt not only ourselves but other people. We are apt to deceive ourselves by thinking these obstacles so absurdly insignificant that it is hardly worth while to warn the next comer of their existence. We tell him, to be sure, of the place where there is a large boulder across the road which he must take heroic measures to circumvent; but it seems hardly worth while to put up a danger-signal to warn him where there are pebbles which may presently get into his shoe. Yet it would be well for those whose paths lie along the beaten track of life that looks so deceptively smooth in the distance to realise in time where some of its 4 trivial habitual difficulties are likely to lie, This suggestion is, no doubt, the most obvious of truisms; but it is difficult for any striking originality to be displayed in connection with this subject, since all general propositions as to conduct, if worth enunciating at all, have probably been enunciated already, It is, of course, of the difficulties and friction of daily life in our own country and in our own time that I am speaking here. That friction, if there be any, may present itself under an entirely different aspect to beings of another race, continent, and civilisation., I cannot tell what the domestic difficulties of the Persian or Hindoo may be; and I am not concerned to find a remedy for them. I am concerned, with those who live in the hustling West, and find it hard to go through daily life without jar and shakings. And in order to do so the more vigilance is needed, in that the worship of speed on which our existence is to a quite horrible extent based to-day is insensibly acting on our characters, and bend ing our moral code into new and strange shapes; causing us, on the one hand, to develop new and disagreeable peculiarities, on the other, to elevate to the pinnacle of Virtues a whole list of qualities which are merely highly expedient in the arrangement of our modern life, simply because they help to carry it on with the least possible delay. We teach our children, therefore, that it is a virtue to accomplish a thing in the shortest time possible: to rise very early, to be punctual, to be ceaselessly occupied. Idleness, indeed, is from the earliest age, in every picture-book, the brand of the evildoer. We may not all of us in our hearts agree with this we may secretly doubt whether this point of view is really more commendable than that of the Oriental whose code is exactly the reverse. He does not insist on doing everything as quickly as possible, he does not even approve of it. He feels no obligation to be in time to the moment. Why should he? he has wisely ordered his |