, 1888-11-24
THE SHEATH OF CUSTOM.
HAVE WE REACHED THE VERY EEST
METHODS OF LIvlNG2

Our Proneness to Honor Customs and
Practices Simply because Everybody else
Does-How Much Is Reasonable and
How Much Is Merely Arbitrary?
Every human being grows up inside a
sheath of custom. which enfoldS it as the
swathing clothes enioid tine infant. The
sacred customs of ones own early home,
how fixed and immutable they appear to
the child! 1t surely thinks that all the
world in all times has proceeded on the
same lines which bound its tiny life. 1t
regards a breach of these rules (some of
them, at least as a wild step in the dark.
leading to unknown dangers. The elders
have always said land, Indeed, it seems
only reasonably that by this time of day
everything has been so thoroughly worked
over that the best methods of ordering
our life-food, dress, domestic practices.
social habits-have long ago been deter
mined. If so, why these d~ivergences in
the simplest and most obvious matters?
And then one thing after another gives
way. The sacred, world wide customs in
which we are bred turn out to be only
The practices of a small or narrow caste or
class; or they prove to be confined to a
very limited locality, and must be left be-
hind when we set out IN our travels; or
they belong to the tenets of d feeble sect;
or they are just the products of one age
in history and no other
Are there really no natural boundaries2
Has not our life anywhere been founded
on reason and necessity, but only on arbi
trary customs? What is more important
han food, yet in what human matter are
there more arbitrary divergences of prac-
ticey The Scotch Highlander lourishes
on oatmeal, which the English Sheffield
iron worker would rather starve than eat;
the fat snail which the Roman country
gentleman once so priced now crawls un
molested in English or American gardens,
rabbits are tabooed in Germany; frogs are
unspeakable in England; sauerkraut is
detested in France; many races and
gangs of people are quite certain they
would die if deprived of meat; others
think spirits of some kind a necessity,
while to others again both these things
are an abomination.
n YET, WHY MOTIF
Every district has its local practices in
food. and the peasants look will the
greatest suspicion on any new dish, II
can rarely be induced to adopt it. Though
it has been abundantly proved that many
of the fungi are excellent eating. such is
the force of custom that the mushroom
alone is ever publicly recognized, while
curiously enough it is said that in some
other countries where the claims of other
agarics are allowed the mushroom itself
is not used. Finally, l feel myself land
the gentle reader probably feels the same)
that | would rather die than subsiSt on
insects, u is the deep seated disgust
we experience toward this class of food
Yet it is notorious that many races of
respectable people adopt a diet of this
sort, and only lately a book has been pub
lishcd giving a detail of excellent proven
der of the kind we habitually overlook
nasty morsels of caterpillars and beetles,
and so forth.
And, indeed, when one comes TO think
of it. what can it be but prejudice which
causes one to eat the p%eriwinkle and re
ject the land snail, or to prize the lively
prawn and prescribe the cheerful grass.
hopper? Why do we sit on chairs instead
of on the floor, as the japanese do, or on
cushions like the Turks? 1t is custom,
and perhaps 1t suits with our other Gus
toms. The more We look into our life and
consider the immense variety of habit in
every department of it-even under con
ditions to all appearances exactly similar
the more are we impressed by the alb.
sence of any serious necessity in the
forms we ourselves are accustomed to-.
Each race, each class, each section of the
population, each unit even, vaunts its
own habits of life as superior to the rest,
as the only true and legitimate forms;
and peoples and classes will go to war
with each other in their assertion of their
own special belief and practices, but the
question that RI her presses upon the in
genuous and inquiring mind Is whether
any of us have got hold of much true life
ut al.-Home journal.