“Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria:
1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always
tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do not create scenes
over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are
conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they
don't make a scandal when they leave. (...)
2) They have
compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts
suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye. (...) 3) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay their debts.
4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They
don't tell lies even in the most trivial matters. To lie to someone is
to insult them, and the liar is diminished in the eyes of the person he
lies to. Civilized people don't put on airs; they behave in the street
as they would at home, they don't show off to impress their juniors.
(...)
5) They don't run themselves down in order to provoke the
sympathy of others. They don't play on other people's heartstrings to
be sighed over and cosseted ... that sort of thing is just cheap
striving for effects, it's vulgar, old hat and false. (...)
6)
They are not vain. They don't waste time with the fake jewellery of
hobnobbing with celebrities, being permitted to shake the hand of a
drunken [judicial orator], the exaggerated bonhomie of the first person
they meet at the Salon, being the life and soul of the bar ... They
regard prases like 'I am a representative of the Press!!' -- the sort of
thing one only hears from [very minor journalists] -- as absurd. If
they have done a brass farthing's work they don't pass it off as if it
were 100 roubles' by swanking about with their portfolios, and they
don't boast of being able to gain admission to places other people
aren't allowed in (...) True talent always sits in the shade, mingles
with the crowd, avoids the limelight ... As Krylov said, the empty
barrel makes more noise than the full one. (...)
7) If they do
possess talent, they value it ... They take pride in it ... they know
they have a responsibility to exert a civilizing influence on [others]
rather than aimlessly hanging out with them. And they are fastidious in
their habits. (...)
8. They work at developing their aesthetic
sensibility ... Civilized people don't simply obey their baser instincts
... they require mens sana in corpore sano.
And so on. That's
what civilized people are like ... Reading Pickwick and learning a
speech from Faust by heart is not enough if your aim is to become a
truly civilized person and not to sink below the level of your
surroundings.
― Anton Chekhov, from a letter to Nikolay Chekhov (March 1886)
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