A people have been characterised as stupid by nature; what a
paradox! because they did not consider that slaves, having no object
to stimulate industry; have not their faculties sharpened by the
only thing that can exercise them, self-interest. Others have been
brought forward as brutes, having no aptitude for the arts and
sciences, only because the progress of improvement had not reached
that stage which produces them.
Those writers who have considered the history of man, or of the
human mind, on a more enlarged scale have fallen into similar
errors, not reflecting that the passions are weak where the
necessaries of life are too hardly or too easily obtained.
Travellers who require that every nation should resemble their
native country, had better stay at home. It is, for example, absurd
to blame a people for not having that degree of personal cleanliness
and elegance of manners which only refinement of taste produces, and
will produce everywhere in proportion as society attains a general
polish. The most essential service, I presume, that authors could
render to society, would be to promote inquiry and discussion,
instead of making those dogmatical assertions which only appear
calculated to gird the human mind round with imaginary circles, like
the paper globe which represents the one he inhabits.
This spirit of inquiry is the characteristic of the present century,
from which the succeeding will, I am persuaded, receive a great
accumulation of knowledge; and doubtless its diffusion will in a
great measure destroy the factitious national characters which have
been supposed permanent, though only rendered so by the permanency
of ignorance.
Arriving at Fredericshall, at the siege of which Charles XII. lost
his life, we had only time to take a transient view of it whilst
they were preparing us some refreshment.
Poor Charles! I thought of him with respect. I have always felt
the same for Alexander, with whom he has been classed as a madman by
several writers, who have reasoned superficially, confounding the
morals of the day with the few grand principles on which
unchangeable morality rests. Making no allowance for the ignorance
and prejudices of the period, they do not perceive how much they
themselves are indebted to general improvement for the acquirements,
and even the virtues, which they would not have had the force of
mind to attain by their individual exertions in a less advanced
state of society.
The evening was fine, as is usual at this season, and the refreshing
odour of the pine woods became more perceptible, for it was nine
o'clock when we left Fredericshall. At the ferry we were detained
by a dispute relative to our Swedish passport, which we did not
think of getting countersigned in Norway.
