THE DINNER PARTY
The highest type of human society in the existing social
order is found in the parlor. In the elegant and refined
reunions of the aristocratic classes there is none of the
impertinent interference of legislation. The Individuality
of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is
perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and
varied. Groups are formed according to attraction. They are
continuously broken up, and re-formed through the operation
of the same subtile and all-pervading influence. Mutual
deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect
harmony, ever yet attained, in complex human relations,
prevails under precisely those circumstances which
Legislators and Statesmen dread as the conditions of
inevitable anarchy and confusion. If there are laws of
etiquette at all, they are mere suggestions of principles
admitted into and judged of for himself or herself, by each
individual mind.
Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of
humanity, with all the innumerable elements of development
which the present age is unfolding, society generally, and
in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade of
perfection as certain portions of society, in certain
special relations, have already attained?
Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by
specific legislation. Let the time which each gentleman
shall be allowed to speak to each lady be fixed by law; the
position in which they should sit or stand be precisely
regulated; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak
of, and the tone of voice and accompanying gestures with
which each may be treated, carefully defined, all under
pretext of preventing disorder and encroachment upon each
other's privileges and rights, then can any thing be
conceived better calculated or more certain to convert
social intercourse into intolerable slavery and hopeless
confusion?
--S. Pearl Andrews
The Science of Society
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