Mark Twain once wrote that “Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater.”  One of the unique things about manners is that although they are a sort of “rules,” they are, in the end, only self-imposed.  They are a matter of right conduct, rather than legal compulsion.

What do I mean?  Well, think about it.  Would anybody tell you that you have excellent manners because you’ve never stolen a car?  Would they declare what a gentlemen you are simply because you’ve never kidnapped somebody for a ransom?  Or that you’re a polite and refined young lady just because you haven’t forged a check or cheated on your taxes?

Of course not.  Those things are illegal, and to refrain from doing them is not to have good manners, but rather simply to do the bare minimum of what is required in order to live in society.  The person who thinks that nothing more is required of him is, in Mark Twain’s words, “the lesser man.”  One suspects that if the laws changed, the lesser man might even have no compunction about doing such things, precisely because they were no longer illegal.

Manners are different, and so is the man or woman who upholds them.  They are what Lord Moulton called “the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable”—the country that “lies between law and free choice….”  Nobody will arrest you, gentlemen, for failing to open the door for a lady…but you ought to do it anyway.  Nobody will send you to jail, ladies, for being late to an appointment…but you should be on time anyway.

Why?  Because to obey only the law and not the standards of right conduct—to have no manners—is to become “a lesser man.”  And for those of us who know better, that is in some ways a more tragic fate than becoming a simply bad man. 

Have a wonderful day.