Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1889-01-24
THE SHEATH OF CUSTOM.
HAVE WE REACHED THE VERY BEST
METHODS OF LIVING?

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
sheath of custom, which enfolds it as the
swathing clothes enfold the 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 it's tiny life. It
regards breach of these rules (some of
them, at least) as wild step in the dark,
leading to unknown dangers. The elders
have always said (and, 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 divergences 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 small or narrow caste or
class; or they prove to be confined to
very limited locality, and must be left be-
hind when we set out on our travels; or
they belong to the tenetS Of feeble sect;
or they are just the products Of one age
in history and no other.
Are there really nc natural boundaries7
Has not our life anywhere been founded
on reason and necessity, but only on arbi-
trary customs? What is more important
than food, yet in what human matter are
there more arbitrary divergences of prac-
tice? The Scotch Highlander fourishes
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
uEspeakable 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.
AND YET, WHY NOT?
Every district has it's local practices in
food, and the peasants look with the
greatest suspicion on any new dish, and
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, feel myself land
the gentle reader probably feels the same)
that l would rather die than subsist on
insects, such is the deep seated disgust
we experience toward this class of food.
Yet it is notorious that many races of
respectable people adopt diet of this
sort, and only lately book has been pub
lished giving 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 periwinkle 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 it 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 ab-
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, vauntc it's
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 rather presses upon the in
genuous and inquiring mind is whether
any of us have got hold of much true life
at an.-Home journal.