All Are Eager To Give A National Character, Which Is
Rarely Just, Because They Do Not Discriminate The Natural From The
Acquired Difference.
The natural, I believe, on due consideration,
will be found to consist merely in the degree of vivacity, or
thoughtfulness, pleasures or pain, inspired by the climate, whilst
the varieties which the forms of government, including religion,
produce are much more numerous and unstable.
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.
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