LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

A lady is both beautiful and discreet, cultured and intelligent. She doesn't desire to be kissed in public, nor does she object to one's disinclination there to hold her hand or put an arm round her waist. One keeps one's hands in one's pockets, and the lady may place a hand on one's nearest arm if she so desires. This is perfectly logical, for it confirms the female's right to a more openly sensual stance.

A lady will usually wear dark clothes, though she may use bright colours in moderation, either occasionally or regularly, on top or underneath, on her clothing or as a part of it. Black underclothes are the least seductive of colours for a female to wear - yellow or red, by contrast, the most. A lady will generally prefer the former to the latter, spurning flagrant seductions.

Ladies occasionally wear make-up but they use it discreetly, never glaringly or with ostentatious intent. Before man made art partly transcendental, he painted his body, and the less-evolved women still do a variation on the same theme. No wonder ladies are careful not to draw attention to themselves in this way! They prefer to allow their natural beauty to speak for itself, and are glad when gentlemen admire them for other than purely sexual reasons.

As for their hair, ladies are careful not to let it grow too long, and therefore prefer to have it regularly cut. When their hair is long and fine, they will take especial pains to tie it up on or near the crown of their head, which makes for a more civilized appearance. Very often a lady's hair is dark, approximating more, in appearance, to the essence of transcendent spirit than to the brightness of the sun. A gentleman, when of spiritual cast, will generally prefer a dark-haired lady to a blonde - contrary to popular myth. He will also require of his lady that she remains slim, and doubtless most ladies, being of slender build, are perfectly able to do so. Slenderness is, after all, an indication of a spiritual predilection, a reflection of a more spiritual constitution.

A lady will never wear anything blatantly seductive, like a very short skirt or see-through blouse. She will dress discreetly, hiding her more obvious physical charms from the vulgar eye. No-one should be able to point at a gentleman in public and say: "You can see what it is about her that he likes!"

A gentleman is above all things gentle, not coarse, brutal, violent, or boorish. He never slams doors but shuts them quietly, with due presence of mind. He would never dream of using physical violence against an opponent in an argument, intellectual or otherwise, but will confine himself, at the worst of times, to mental violence - should such violence be unavoidable. Gentlemen are occasionally subjected to physical violence by men but, if they survive it, can always sue for assault. A threat of suing an ungentlemanly potential assailant for assault may serve as a useful deterrent, and is, besides, a form of mental violence.

A gentleman rarely or never moves quickly or acts rashly, but takes his time, is langsam, to cite Nietzsche, for reasons of propriety, since he should more approximate, in his conduct, to being than to doing. A gentleman will spend most of his time sitting still, whether at work or at play. He won't be one to engage in active sports!

As for clothing, a gentleman's clothes are mostly dark rather than ostentatious or trendy. He will generally prefer to keep most of his clothes on, even in hot weather, and will never venture out in winter without adequate protection against the elements. He doesn't like to be brought into too close a contact with rain, and will usually possess the means of protecting himself from direct contact with it. Men think that braving the rain bare-headed is a sign of manliness, and tend to regard umbrellas and hoods as unworthy of masculine vanity. They don't realize, as a rule, that a gentleman's reluctance to get his head wet stems from a transcendental bias, opposing its upholder to brute contact with the elements.

In sexual matters, gentlemen are usually moderate, preferring, of the two alternatives, to reduce their sexual commitments to a minimum than to increase them towards a maximum. Their ladies are generally resigned to a less vigorous sex-life.

Ladies and gentlemen have existed for centuries and will doubtless continue to exist, so long as the human race survives. There is no reason to suppose that social progress will put an end to them, though it may oppose certain kinds of ladies and gentlemen whose lifestyles are insufficiently modern. What social progress would really like to do, over a period of decades or even centuries, is to transform as many people as possible into ladies and gentlemen by improving the quality of life on as equalitarian a basis as possible. It would be real progress if, instead of men and gentlemen or women and ladies, the great majority of people in the future were ladies and gentlemen in the best sense of the words - the ladies discreet and the gentlemen gentle.