第6章 LETTER 2(4)

Let me explain what I mean by an example.There is scarce any folly or vice more epidemical among the sons of men,than that ridiculous and hurtful vanity by which the people of each country are apt to prefer themselves to those of every other;and to make their own customs,and manners,and opinions,the standards of right and wrong,of true and false.The Chinese mandarins were strangely surprised,and almost incredulous,when the Jesuits showed them how small a figure their empire made in the general map of the world.

The Samojedes wondered much at the Czar of Muscovy for not living among them:

and the Hottentot,who returned from Europe,stripped himself naked as soon as he came home,put on his bracelets of guts and garbage,and grew stinking and lousy as fast as he could.Now nothing can contribute more to prevent us from being tainted with this vanity,than to accustom ourselves early to contemplate the different nations of the earth,in that vast map which history spreads before us,in their rise and their fall,in their barbarous and civilised states,in the likeness and unlikeness of them all to one another,and of each to itself.By frequently renewing this prospect to the mind,the Mexican with his cap and coat of feathers,sacrificing a human victim to his god,will not appear more savage to our eyes than the Spaniard with a hat on his head,and a gonilla round his neck,sacrificing whole nations to his ambition,his avarice,and even the wantonness of his cruelty.I might show,by a multitude of other examples,how history prepares us for experience,and guides us in it:and many of these would be both curious and important.

I might likewise bring several other instances,wherein history serves to purge the mind of those national partialities and prejudices that we are apt to contract in our education,and that experience for the most part rather confirms than removes:because it is for the most part confined,like our education.But I apprehend growing too prolix,and shall therefore conclude this head by observing,that though an early and proper application to the study of history will contribute extremely to keep our minds free from a ridiculous partiality in favor of our own country,and a vicious prejudice against others;yet the same study will create in us a preference of affection to our own country.There is a story told of Abgarus.He brought several beasts taken in different places to Rome,they say,and let them loose before Augustus:every beast ran immediately to that part of the circus where a parcel of earth taken from his native soil had been laid."Credat Judaeus Apella."This tale might pass on Josephus;for in him,I believe,Iread it:but surely the love of our country is a lesson of reason,not an institution of nature.Education and habit,obligation and interest,attach us to it,not instinct.It is however so necessary to be cultivated,and the prosperity of all societies,as well as the grandeur of some,depends upon it so much,that orators by their eloquence,and poets by their enthusiasm,have endeavored to work up this precept of morality into a principle of passion.

But the examples which we find in history,improved by the lively deions,and the just applauses or censures of historians,will have a much better and more permanent effect than declamation or song,or the dry ethics of mere philosophy.In fine,to converse with historians is to keep good company:

many of them were excellent men,and those who were not such,have taken care,however,to appear such in their writings.It must be,therefore,of great use to prepare ourselves by this conversation for that of the world;and to receive our first impressions,and to acquire our first habits,in a scene where images of virtue and vice are continually represented to us in the colors that belong properly to them,before we enter on another scene,where virtue and vice are too often confounded,and what belongs to one is ascribed to the other.