THEIK PlilNCIl'LES.

305

VI.

OPINIONS, SENTIMENTS, AND CREED.

Ur to this point we have dealt with but the outside, as it were,of the Prussian character — representing rather their externalmanners than their internal tlioughts and feelings.

Manners, among the ignorant, are often confounded withmorals. True, the words, etymologically considered, meanthe same; but, in an ethical point of view, they are asdifferent one from the other, as the motions of the puppetsfrom the invisible hand that pulls the strings. Indeed,manners are but modes of human action; in a primitiveState of society, they are the " natural signs " by which ourvarious feelings are expressed. For, as artists are awarethat each different emotion has a different gesture and castof feature by which to make itself known to others, (andthe imitation of these mere muscular renderings of ourinward feelings constitutes the art of pantomime on thestage,) so is there a peculiar kind of pantomime observablein the various forms of society, by which the refined aredistinguished from the unrefined in every civilized nation.

But as every manner of action admits of being imitated,so the various gestures of the body and expressions of thefeatures (though originally the natural and true representa-tives of inward sentiments and passions) become, in an arti-ficial state, the most fallacious criteria, not only as to thereal disposition of an individual, but as to what is either

agreeablu or disagreeable to Ins nature.

VOL. II.

Hence a breachx