(To THE EDITOR Of THE "SPECTATOR:1 Sin,—After reading your suggestive
article on "The Anti- septics of Conduct" in the Spectator of May 27th, I find myself in agreement with your contributor in thinking that a sense of personal dignity is a safeguard against the faults of the family described by Clough, who "Will at table d'hôte and restaurant Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even : Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth !"
Mill has maintained that, in default of the highest virtue, aristocracies have a safeguard in the morality of pride, democracies in that of self-interest ; and he goes on to contend, rightly or wrongly, that the latter safeguard, though leas sentimental than the former, is more durable. It is clear that pride, thus understood, is much the same as a sense of
personal dignity. In relation to this stop-gap of virtue, it may be well to quote what Macaulay says of Mirabeau :— " There was in him, not indeed anything deserving the name of virtue, but that imperfect substitute for virtue which is found in almost all superior minds,—a sensibility to the beautiful and the good, which sometimes amounted to sincere enthusiasm ; and which, mingled with the desire of admiration, sometimes gave to his character a lustre resembling the lustre of true goodness,— as the faded splendour wan' which lingered round the fallen archangel resembled the exceeding brightness of those spirits who had kept their first estate."
I cannot agree with your contributor in thinking that the love of approbation is as rare among men as humour is among women. Surely the love of approbation, or, let us say,
the desire of popularity, is extremely common among men. Ambition is the last infirmity of noble minds : and popularity is sometimes the goal, and nearly always the stepping-stone, of ambition. Has not Shakespeare bestowed ironical pity on candidates for power who must needs solicit "the most sweet voices" of the multitude ? There is, however, a real difference between the sexes in this respect. The approbation, or rather admiration, coveted by women has too often reference to purely external graces, whereas the admiration sought by good men is of the kind accorded to intellectual and moral excellence. The "antiseptic of conduct" which belongs especially to women seems to me to consist, not in the love of approbation, but in tact. Macaulay has paid a significant
compliment to the memory of Madame de Maintenon, whose tact, he tells us, was as superior to the tact of her sex as the tact of her sex is to the tact of ours. Will it be said that tact is often not an aid to goodness, inasmuch as it gives facility for dissimulation ? True ; but womanly tact is a high form of good taste, so that if good taste is generally a
safeguard of conduct in men, tact ought to be a more potent safeguard of it in women. This seems to be indicated by Goethe in his famous lines :— " Wouldst thou discern more clearly what beseems P Ask noble women ; they are quick to feel If aught is done 'gainst seemliness or right."
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