by Bertrand Russell

Education is, to most young people, a painful process, and not its least painful part is instruction in correct social behavior. I have sometimes passed children playing in the park and heard them say in a loud, clear voice, ‘Mummy, who is that funny old man?’ To which comes a shocked, subdued, ‘Hush! Hush!' The children become dimly aware that they have done something wrong but are completely at a loss to imagine what it is. All children occasionally get presents that they do not like and are instructed by their parents that they must seem to be delighted with them. As they are also informed that they ought not to tell lies, the result is a moral confusion. By the time we grow tip we have learned to keep the virtues of tact and truthfulness in watertight compartments and to know which are the occasions for the one and which for the other.

Bertrand Russell

It cannot be denied that tact is a virtue. The sort of person who always manages to blurt out the tactless thing, apparently by accident, is a person full of dislike of his or her fellow creatures. But although tact is a virtue, it is very closely allied to certain vices; the line between tact and hypocrisy is a very narrow one, I think the distinction comes in the motive: when it is kindliness that makes us wish- to please, our tact is the right sort; when it is fear of offending, or desire to obtain some advantage by flattery our tact is apt to be of a less amiable kind.

Men accustomed to difficult negotiations learn a kind of tenderness towards the vanity of others and indeed towards all their prejudices, which is infinitely shocking to those who make a cult of sincerity. George Fox, like all early Quakers, objected to conventional forms of respect as savoring of idolatry. When, by order of King Charles II, an officer came lo arrest him, the officer, who was a gentleman and did not like the job, took off his hat to Fox who retorted by exclaiming, 'Repent, thou beast!' It was not the officer’s arresting him that he minded, but his taking off his hat.

Men who are profoundly in earnest have always had this dislike of tact. When Beethoven went to visit Goethe at Weimar, he could not bear to see the great man behaving politely at Court to a set of fools. Kropotkin relates how the early Russian revolutionaries, many of whom were aristocratic, deliberately abandoned all forms of politeness. I have known myself men who were in all circumstances sincere and never told a polite lie, and have found that their genuineness was appreciated and that what in others would have been thought rude gave no offence when coming from them. They have made me feel ashamed of practicing politeness, and yet I have never ventured to imitate them.

I think the gist of the matter is that a saint can live without politeness, and indeed that politeness is incompatible with a saintly character. But the man who is always to be sincere must be free from spite and envy and malice and pettiness. Most of us have a dose of these vices in our composition and therefore have to exercise tact to avoid giving offence. We cannot all be saints, and if saintliness is impossible, we may at least try not to be too disagreeable.

There have been four sorts of ages in the world's history. There have been ages when everybody thought they knew everything, ages when nobody thought they knew anything, ages when clever people thought they knew much and stupid people thought they knew little, and ages when stupid people thought they knew much and clever people thought they knew little.

The first sort of age is one of stability, the second of slow decay, the third of progress, the fourth of disaster. All primitive ages belong to the first sort: no one has any doubt as to the tribal religion, the wisdom of ancient customs, or the magic by which good crops are to be secured; consequently everyone is happy in the absence of some tangible reason, such as starvation, for being unhappy.

The second sort of age is exemplified by the ancient world before the rise of Christianity but after decadence had begun. In the Roman Empire, tribal religions lost their exclusiveness and force: in proportion as people came to think that there might be truth in religions of others, they also came to think that their might be falsehood in their own. Eastern necromancy was half believed, half disbelieved; the German barbarians were supposed to possess virtues that the more civilised portions of mankind hand lost. Consequently everybody doubted everything, and doubt paralysed effort.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exactly the opposite happened. Science and scientific technique were a novelty, and gave immense self-confidence to those who understood them. Their triumphs were obvious and astonishing. Repeatedly, when the Chinese Emperor had decided to persecute the Jesuits, they would turn out to be right about the date of an expected eclipse when the imperial astronomers were wrong, and the Emperor would decide that such clever men, after all, deserved his favours. In England, those who introduced scientific methods in agriculture obtained visibly larger crops than those who adhered to old-time methods, while in manufactures team and machinery put the conservatives to flight. There came, therefore, to be a general belief in educated intelligence. Those who did not possess it allowed themselves to be guided by those who did, and an era of rapid progress resulted.

In our age, the exact opposite is the case. Men of science like Eddington are doubtful whether science really knows anything. Economists perceive that the accepted methods of doing the world's business are making everybody poor. Statesmen cannot find any way of securing international co-operation or preventing war. Philosophers have no guidance to offer mankind. The only people left with positive opinions are those who are too stupid to know when their opinions are absurd. Consequently the world is ruled by fools, and the intelligent count for nothing in the councils of the nations.

This state of affairs, if it continues, must plunge the world more and more deeply into misfortune. The scepticism of the intelligent is the cause of their impotence, and is itself the effect of their laziness: if there is nothing worth doing, that gives an excuse for sitting still. But when disaster is impending, no excuse for sitting still can be valid. The intelligent will have to shed their scepticism, or share responsibility for the evils which all deplore. And they will have to abandon academic grumblings and peevish pedantries, for nothing that they may say will be of any use unless they learn to speak a language that the democracy can appreciate.