By Ward S. Allen
Southerners live in the 18th century. This common charge is not altogether false, since the peculiar habits, customs, and meanings of words found often in the American South are found also in 18th century English authors. Such a word is manners. Most English-speaking people and some Southerners use the word now in the only senses current during the past two centuries. These meanings are designated in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as current: ‘External behaviour in social intercourse’ or ‘Polite behaviour or deportment; habits indicative of good breeding.’ But the oldest meaning for manners and the meaning which has had the longest continual use is now marked obsolete. The first citation in the OED for this meaning is dated 1225; the last citation is dated 1794, when, apparently, this sense fell out of use. The next to last citation for this meaning is dated 1757; it comes from Dr Samuel Johnson. Those who continue to use this sense, as many Southerners do, are living in the 18th century. This obsolete meaning is: ‘A person’s habitual behaviour or conduct, esp. in reference to its moral aspect, moral character.’
Those who think of manners in this sense are two hundred years behind the times. But the mode of thought which connects moral character to manners had been accepted for over two thousand years when it fell out of use among English-speaking people. The Greek word ethe and the Latin word mores join behaviour, character, and morals into a general notion. This general notion is the source for the concept expressed in the English word manners, ‘which early became the recognised translation of L. modus and mos, and its sense development has been affected by assimilation to both these words’ (OED). So, Southerners who continue to hold this concept are not merely two hundred years behind the times. Thinking by way of a notion which is central to Plato’s and Aristotle’s thought, Southerners are two thousand and five hundred years behind the times.
The Greek word ethe is translated as manners in the King James Version of the Bible, that book which has had such a conspicuous influence on the civilisation of the Bible Belt. In the prologue to Ecclesiasticus, which in the King James Version has been placed in the Apocrypha, it is stated that Ecclesiasticus is for ‘them also, which in a strange country are willing to learn, being prepared before in manners to live after the law.’ The Greek word translated as manners is ethe. Here the moral foundation for manners is the Law of Moses. St Paul warned the Corinthians that ‘evil communications corrupt good manners’ (1 Cor. 15.33). He is quoting Menander, an Athenian poet who lived in the 4th century B.C. We can assume, then, that Menander recognised the four cardinal virtues as the foundation for ethe. To these St Paul added the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity.
Read the rest at the Abbeville Institute.
The late Ward S. Allen was the Hargis Professor of English (Emeritus) at Auburn University in Alabama. Find out more about this convert to Orthodox Christianity at his Memory Eternal page.
