The structure of the book is
- The philosophy of observing: e.g. do not judge too soon.
- What to observe?
- The mechanics of observing.
The title include “how to” so it sounds like it should cover the 3rd part. In fact, the 3rd part is the shortest.
The author used somewhat a poetic language with a lot of parallel sentences. Once I got used to his style of writing, it’s not too hard to read.
- Your Note on page 10 | Location 157 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 6:31:23 AM
not to generalize too soon.
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Highlight on page 10 | Location 155-157 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 6:31:23 AM
Abject thinkers, passive readers, adopt his words; parents repeat them to their children; and townspeople spread the judgment into the villages and hamlets—the strongholds of prejudice; future travellers see according to the prepossessions given them, and add their testimony to the error, till it becomes the work of a century to reverse a hasty generalization. It
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Highlight on page 11 | Location 167-170 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 6:32:36 AM
As long as travellers continue to neglect the safe means of generalization which are within the reach of all, and build theories upon the manifestations of individual minds, there is little hope of inspiring men with that spirit of impartiality, mutual deference, and love, which are the best enlighteners of the eyes and rectifiers of the understanding. Above all things, the traveller must not despair
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Highlight on page 11 | Location 175-178 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 6:33:35 AM
It is a safe rule, in morals as in physics, that no fact is without its use. Every observer and recorder is fulfilling a function; and no one observer or recorder ought to feel discouragement, as long as he desires to be useful rather than shining; to be the servant rather than the lord of science, and a friend to the home-stayers rather than their dictator.
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Highlight on page 15 | Location 226-227 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 6:39:40 AM
To test the morals and manners of a nation by a reference to the essentials of human happiness, is to strike at once to the centre, and to see things as they are.
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Highlight on page 30 | Location 532-537 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 6:51:26 AM
The traveller, being furnished with the philosophical requisites for the observation of morals and manners, 1stly. With a certainty of what it is that he wants to know,— 2ndly. With principles which may serve as a rallying point and test of his observations,— 3rdly. With, for instance, a philosophical and definite, instead of a popular and vague, notion about the origin of human feelings of right and wrong,— 4thly. And with a settled conviction that prevalent virtues and vices are the result of gigantic general influences,—is yet not fitted for his object if certain moral requisites be wanting in him.
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Highlight on page 44 | Location 799-800 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 7:07:07 AM
The grand secret of wise inquiry into Morals and Manners is to begin with the study of THINGS, using the DISCOURSE OF PERSONS as a commentary upon them.
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Note on page 46 | Location 842 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 7:26:41 AM
this author used lot of long parallel in this book.
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How to Observe Morals and Manners (Martineau, Harriet)
- Your Highlight on page 45 | Location 808-842 | Added on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 7:26:42 AM
General indications must be looked for, instead of generalizations being framed from the manners of individuals. In cities, do social meetings abound? and what are their purposes and character? Are they most religious, political, or festive? If religious, have they more the character of Passion Week at Rome, or of a camp-meeting in Ohio? If political, do the people meet on wide plains to worship the Sun of the Celestial Empire, as in China; or in town-halls, to remonstrate with their representatives, as in England; or in secret places, to spring mines under the thrones of their rulers, as in Spain? If festive, are they most like an Italian carnival, where everybody laughs; or an Egyptian holiday, when all eyes are solemnly fixed on the whirling Dervishes? Are women there? In what proportions, and under what law of liberty? What are the public amusements? There is an intelligible difference between the opera at Milan, and the theatre at Paris, and a bull-fight at Madrid, and a fair at Leipzig, and a review at St. Petersburg.—In country towns, how is the imitation of the metropolis carried on? Do the provincials emulate most in show, in science, or in the fine arts?—In the villages, what are the popular amusements? Do the people meet to drink or to read, to discuss, or play games, or dance? What are the public houses like? Do the people eat fruit and tell stories? or drink ale and talk politics or call for tea and saunter about? or coffee and play dominoes? or lemonade and laugh at Punch? Do they crowd within four walls, or gather under the elm, or spread themselves abroad over the cricket-field or the yellow sands?—There is as wide a difference among the humbler classes of various countries as among their superiors in rank. A Scotch burial is wholly unlike the ceremonies of the funeral pile among the Cingalese; and an interment in the Greek church little resembles either. A conclave of White Boys in Mayo, assembled in a mud hovel on a heath, to pledge one another to their dreadful oath, is widely different from a similar conclave of Swiss insurgents, met in a pine wood on a steep, on the same kind of errand: and both are as little like as may be to the heroes of the last revolution in Paris, or to the companies of Covenanters that were wont to meet, under a similar pressure of circumstances, in the defiles of the Scottish mountains.—In the manners of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the court of Ava?—What are the manners of professional men of the society, from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the village barber? The manners of the great body of the professional men must indicate much of the requisitions of the society they serve.—So, also, must every circumstance connected with the service of society: its character, whether slavish or free, abject or prosperous, comprehensive or narrow in its uses, must testify to the desires and habits, and therefore to the manners of a community, better than the conversation or deportment of any individual in the society can do. A traveller who bears all this in mind can hardly go wrong. Every thing that he looks upon will instruct him, from an aqueduct to a punch-bowl, from a penitentiary to an aviary, from the apparatus of a university to the furniture of an alehouse or a nursery. When it was found that the chiefs of the Red men could not be impressed with any notion of the civilization of the Whites by all that many white men could say, they were brought into the cities of the Whites. The exhibition of a ship was enough for some. The warriors of the prairies were too proud to utter their astonishment,—too noble to hint, even to one another, their fear; but the perspiration stood on their brows as they dumbly gazed, and no word of war passed their lips from that hour. Another, who could listen with calmness to the tales of boastful traders in the wilderness, was moved from his apathy by seeing a workman in a glasshouse put a handle upon a pitcher. He was transported out of his silence and reserve: he seized and grasped the hand of the workman, crying out that it was now plain that he had had intercourse with the Great Spirit. By the evidence of things these Indians had learned more of the manners of the Whites than had ever been taught them by speech.—Which of us would not learn more of the manners of the Pompeians by a morning's walk among the relics of their abodes and public halls than by many a nightly conference with certain of their ghosts?
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