There is a kind of comparatively harmless gossip that some men indulge in, that makes them appear very diminutive in the eyes of men of the world. I refer to the habit some men have of making what may chance to come to their knowledge of other people’s affairs and movements the subject of conversation. Though there is generally nothing malicious in the gabble of these busybodies, it sometimes causes a deal of unpleasantness. Men whose ambition it is to appear knowing, _know_, if they did but know it, far less than their discreet-mouthed neighbors.
All writers on the amenities of conversation agree that the discussion of politics and religion should be excluded from general society, for the reason that such discussions are very liable to end unpleasantly. Yet this would never be the case, if we were sufficiently philosophic to reflect that we are all what circumstances have made us, and that we, with only now and then an exception, should be of the same opinions as our neighbors had we been reared under like influences. When we censure another for his way of thinking, if we did but know it, we find fault not with him, but with the surroundings amid which he has grown up. There are but very few men in the world that have opinions that are really their own, _i.e._, that are the product of their own, independent judgment. Most men simply echo the opinions that have chanced to fall to their lot, and had other opinions chanced to fall to their lot--though directly opposed to those they now entertain--they would, in like manner, have echoed them--have fought for them, if occasion offered. But as there are very few of us that are not swayed by prejudice rather than guided by philosophy, politics and religion are, and are pretty sure to remain, dangerous topics to introduce into the social circle, and that, too, for the simple reason, as already intimated, that they are subjects upon which people generally feel so deeply that they cannot discuss them calmly, courteously, and rationally.
We sometimes meet with persons that lose no opportunity to say sharp things--things that wound. They are occasionally persons of some wit, but they are never persons of any wisdom, or they would not do what is sure to make them many enemies. Good manners without kindliness is impossible.