Civility, Politeness, Affability. Honest manners in acting and conversing with other men in society; but affability , consisting of a suggestion of the kindness with which a superior receives his inferior, is rarely used from equal to equal, and never from inferior to superior. It is often among the highly born only an artificial virtue that serves their ambition, a baseness of the soul that attempts to create itself some clients (because it is a sign of baseness). I do not know why the word affability did not please M. Patru; it would be a pity to banish it from our language as it is unique for expressing what can only be said by means of a periphrase.

Civility and politeness represent a certain propriety in manners and speech that tends to please and which demonstrates the respect we have for each other.

Without necessarily emanating from the heart, they convey appearances and make man appear on the outside as he should be on the inside. It is, la Bruyere says, a way of paying attention to our speech and manners in order for others to be content with us.

Civility does not express as much as politeness , and it is only a part of it; it is a certain fear that by lacking it one is considered a rude man; it is a step to be thought of as polite. This is why politeness , when this term is used, seems to be reserved for courtiers and persons of quality; and civility , for persons of a lower rank, for the largest number of citizens.

I have read books about civility so filled with maxims and precepts to fulfill its obligations, that I would have preferred uncouthness and rudeness to practicing this fawning civility they praise so much. Who would not think like Montaigne? "I like," says this author ( Essais liv. I. ch. xiij. ), “to follow the laws of civility , but not so cowardly that my life is constricted. They have a few difficult forms, that if forgotten by discretion and not by error, one does not behave any the less gracefully. I often saw men who were uncivil due to too much civility , and lack of courtesy. The science of tactful behavior is, for all that, a very useful science. It is like grace and beauty facilitating the first steps in society and familiarity, and it consequently opens the door to our education through the examples of others, and to exploiting and producing our own example, if it has something that is educational and transferable.”

But excessive civility is also tiresome and useless, thus it is no longer used by worldly society. Courtiers, being too busy, have erected on its ruins an edifice called politeness , that currently is the basis and the morale of good education, and that consequently deserves a separate article. We will be content here to say only that it is usually just the art of dispensing with the virtues it imitates.

Civility , as it is commonly understood, comes at a real price; considered as an eagerness to show respect and regard for others, by an inner feeling consistent with reason, it is an application of natural right, all the more laudable as it is free and well founded.

Some legislators even wanted manners to represent mores, and made it a subject of their civil laws. It is true that Lycurgus, when shaping manners, did not have civility as an objective; but it is that people always correcting others or always being corrected, as M. de Montesquieu says, equally simple and rigid, did not need anything from the outside; rather, they were more practicing virtues amongst themselves than showing respect for each other.

The Chinese who turned everything into rites, including the simplest things of life, and who shaped their empire according to the idea of the government of a family, wanted men to feel that they depended on each other, and consequently their legislators have greatly extended the rules of civility . One can read Father Duhalde on this matter.

Thus, to finish this article with a reflection by the author of the spirit of laws, "One sees in China villagers observing among themselves marks of politeness as if they were of higher rank– very proper means to maintain peace and good order among the people, and to suppress all vices originating in a harsh, vain, and haughty spirit. These rules of civility are much worthier than the ones of politeness . The latter flatters the vices of others, and civility prevents ours from coming to light: it is a barrier that men put between themselves to refrain from getting corrupted.