serve strict obedience to it.
I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette,
but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to
ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my
mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the
contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for
the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether
trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most
appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything
to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both
the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as
the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain
definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a
novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed
is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the
most economical use of force,--hence, according to Spencer's dictum, the
most graceful.

The spiritual significance of social decorum,--or, I might say, to
borrow from the vocabulary of the "Philosophy of Clothes," the
spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward
garments,--is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us
in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our
ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave
rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book.
It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety,
that I wish to emphasize.

I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so
much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into
existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was
put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the
Ogasawara, in the following terms: "The end of all etiquette is to so
cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the
roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person." It means, in other
words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the
parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such
harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of
spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word
_b