Consideration for the old and weak and the avoidance of giving unnecessary offence to others are__________ .

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the question.

Etiquette

Every code of etiquette has contained three elements: basic moral duties; practical rules which promote efficiency; and artificial, optional graces such as formal compliments to women on their beauty or superiors on their generosity and importance.

In the first category are consideration for the weak and respect for age. Among the ancient Egyptians the young always stood in the presence of older people. Among the Mponguwe of Tanzania, the young men bow as they pass the huts of the elders. In England, until about a century ago, young children did not sit in their parents' presence without asking permission. Practical rules are helpful in such ordinary occurrences of social life as making proper introductions at parties or other functions so that people can be brought to know each other. Before the invention of the fork, etiquette directed that the fingers should be kept as clean as possible; before the handkerchief came into common use, etiquette suggested that, afìer spitting a person should rub the spit inconspicuously under foot.

Extremely refined behaviour, however, cultivated as an art of gracious living, has been characteristic only of societies with wealth and leisure, which admitted women as the social equals of men. After the fall of Rome, the first European society to regulate behaviour in private life in accordance with a complicated code of etiquette was 12^th century Provence, in France.

Provence had become wealthy. The lords had returned to their castles, and there the ideals of chivalry grew up, which emphasised the virtue and gentleness of women and demanded that a knight should profess a pure and dedicated love to a lady who would be his inspiration, and to whom he would dedicate his valiant deeds, though he would never come physically close to her. This was the introduction of the concept of romantic love, which was to influence literature for many hundreds of years.

In Renaissance Italy too, in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, a wealthy and leisured society developed an extremely complex code of manners, but the rules of behaviour of fashionable society had little influence on the daily life of the lower classes. Indeed many of the rules, such as how to enter a banquet room, or how to use a sword or handkerchief for ceremonial purposes, were irrelevant to the way of life of the average working man, who spent most of his life outdoors or in his own poor hut and most probably did not have a handkerchief, certainly not a sword, to his name.

Yet the essential basis of all good manners does not vary. Consideration for the old and weak and the avoidance of harming or giving unnecessary offence to others is a feature of all societies everywhere and at all levels from the highest to the lowest.

Câu 16544: Consideration for the old and weak and the avoidance of giving unnecessary offence to others are__________ .

A. the essential basis of all systems of good manners.

B. not a universal feature of etiquette.

C. taught to the lower classes by the upper classes.

D. often neglected by polite society.

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