SECT. II.
V. Our opinion of this matter differs greatly from that of the bulk of mankind, by whom it is generally believed, the love of their country is natural to, and transcendent in all men; and as a proof of it, they alledge the repugnance, which all, or nearly all men feel at abandoning the country in which they were born, to go and reside in any other whatever; but I find here a great equivocation, and that what men call the love of their country, is in reality, nothing else but the love of their own convenience. There is no man who does not leave his own country cheerfully, when he has expectations by going to another of mending his fortune; and examples of this sort are seen every day. Of all the fables that have been fabricated by the poets, there is no one appears to be more void of probability, than that of Ulysses’s having preferred the dreary and unpleasant rocks and craigs of his own country Ithaca, to the immortality full of delights, which was offered him by the nymph Calipso, upon condition that he would come and live with her in the island of Ogygia.
VI. I may be told, that the Scythians, as Ovid testifies, fled from the delicacies of Rome, to the asperities of their own frozen soil; that the Laplanders, maugre all the conveniences and accommodations that were offered them at Vienna, sighed to return to their own poor steril country; and that but a few years ago, a Canadian savage who was brought to Paris, where he was furnished with every possible convenience, lived there in a seeming state of affliction and melancholy.
VII. I say in answer to all this, that it is true; but it is also true, that these men live with more convenience to themselves in Scythia, in Lapland, and in Canada, than in Vienna, at Paris, or in Rome. Habituated to the food of their country, however hard and coarse it may appear to us, they find it both grateful and salutary. They are born among snow, and live pleasantly in the midst of it; and as we cannot bear the cold of northern regions, they cannot endure the heat of southern ones. Their mode of government, is suited to their tempers and dispositions, and although the form is but indifferent, they being reconciled to it by custom, believe that nature itself never dictated any other. Our policy seems as barbarous to them, as theirs does to us. Here, we think it impossible to live without a house or permanent abode; they look upon this as a voluntary imprisonment, and regard it as much more convenient, to be at liberty to change their habitation, when, and unto wherever it is most agreeable to them, fabricating it in the evening, for the use of the night and the next day, either in the valley, on the side of the mountain, or in the plain. The accommodation afforded by changing situations as the seasons of the year vary, is enjoyed among us, by none but the great and the opulent; among those barbarians, there is no one who does not enjoy it; and I must confess for myself, that I look upon a man’s having power, whenever he pleases, to remove from a disagreeable neighbourhood, and settle himself in one he likes better, as a very enviable happiness.
VIII. Olaus Rudbec, a noble Swede, who had travelled a great deal through the northern regions, in a book that he wrote, intitled Lapland Illustrated, says, that the inhabitants of it, are so convinced of the advantages of their situation, that they would not exchange their own, for all the countries in the world. In fact, they possess some benefits or conveniencies in it, which are not imaginary, but real. That country, produces some regaling fruits, although they are different from ours; and the abundance of game and fish in it, all of them remarkably fine flavoured, is immense. The winters, which with us are so disagreeably damp and rainy, are there clear and serene; from whence it follows, that the natives are active, healthy, and robust. Thunder storms are scarce ever known in that region, nor is there a venomous snake to be found in all the country. They live also exempt from those two great scourges of Heaven, war and pestilence, their climate defending them from both these visitations, it being as obnoxious to strangers and the plague, as it is healthy to the natives. The snow does not incommode them, for by their natural agility, added to art and contrivance they fly over the tops of the snowy heights like crows. The multitude of white bears with which the country abounds, serves them for amusement and diversion; for they are so dextrous in combating these fierce animals, that there is scarce a Laplander, who does not kill many of them in a year, although it is very rare, that a Laplander is ever killed by one of them.
IX. We may add, that the long nights in those subpolar regions, of which they give us so horrible a representation, are not so dismal as they are imagined to be. They hardly experience total darkness there above one whole month; the reason is, because the sun descends below his horizon only twenty-three degrees and a half; and according to the computation of astronomers, the twilight may be perceived at eighteen degrees of depression. Neither does the apparent absence of the sun continue for six months, as it is commonly thought, but for five only, for on account of the great refraction of the rays in that atmosphere, you see the sun, half a month before it mounts above the horizon, and for the same space of time after it descends below it. Some Dutchmen in a northern voyage they made in 1596, being in the latitude of 76, were vastly astonished at seeing the sun fifteen or sixteen days before they expected to see it. In our discourse on mathematical paradoxes, we explained this phænomenon, and shewed, that by attending to, and computing all things, those who inhabit near the Poles, enjoy the light of the sun for a greater portion of the year, than those who live in the temperate and torrid zones; therefore what is said of the equal repartition of light all over the world, although it is generally assented to, is not true.
X. We much admire, and live very happily on the aliments we commonly use; but there is no nation, to which the same thing does not happen. The people of the northern regions, find the flesh of bears, wolves, and foxes, very savoury and regaling. The Tartars are fond of horse-flesh; the Arabs of the flesh of camels; and the Africans and Chinese, of that of dogs; for they both eat and sell them in the markets as we do pig pork. In some regions of Africa, they eat monkies, crocodiles, and serpents; and Scaliger says, that in various parts of the east, bats are esteemed as regaling a dish, as chickens are with us.
XI. The same that happens in point of food, happens with respect to everything else, for whether it proceeds from the force of habit or the proportion of temperament or disposition of each nation respectively, or that things of the same species, have different qualities in different countries, which make them more or less commodious or agreeable; every one finds himself better satisfied with the things of his own country, than with those of a foreign one, and he is therefore attached to it, because he feels his own convenience better gratified there, and his partiality for it is not influenced by the supposed love of his country.
XII. The inhabitants of the Marian islands, which are so called from Dona Mariana of Austria, who sent missionaries among them for their conversion, made no use of, nor had any knowledge of fire. Who, however, would venture to assert, that this element was not indispensably necessary to human life, or that there was any nation whatever, which could subsist without it? But notwithstanding this, those islanders, without fire, lived contented and happy. They were not sensible of the want of it, because they did not know it. Roots, fruit, and crude fish, were all their aliment; and still they were more healthy and robust than we, for living to a hundred years of age, was very frequent and common among them.
XIII. The force of custom is amazingly powerful, for it is capable of not only making the greatest asperities sufferable, but by peoples being familiarized to them, it also causes their being satisfied under them. He who was not well apprized of this truth, would be led to think what passed between Esteban King of Poland, and the Peasants of Livonia, incredible. This glorious Prince having observed, that these poor people were cruelly and very ill-treated by the nobles of the province, convened them together, and after condoling with them on their misery, told them, he proposed to make their subjection less severe and easier to be tolerated, by restraining the exercise of power in the nobility, within more mild and moderate bounds; but wonderful to relate, instead of seeming sensible of his benevolence, and embracing the offer he made them, they threw themselves at his feet, and begged he would not alter their customs, with which, through long usage, they were quite satisfied. What will not the force of habit conquer, if it is capable of making tyranny agreeable! Join to this, the circumstance of the Muscovite women, who are not happy or contented, unless their husbands, without their giving them any occasion for it, beat or cudgel them every day, regarding this unprovoked ill-treatment, as a token of their great love for them.
XIV. We may add to the foregoing remarks, that an uniformity of language, religion, and customs, makes the intercourse with our countrymen grateful and pleasing, as a diversity in those matters, makes the society of strangers aukward and unentertaining. Our particular connections and personal friendships also, tend to produce the same effect; and generally speaking, the love of convenience, and of that private ease and happiness, which every man finds in his own country, is what attracts him to, and retains him in it, and not the love of the country itself. He who should experience better personal accommodation in another region, would do as St. Peter did, who, as soon as he found himself happily situated on Mount Tabor, resolved to fix his lasting abode on that eminence, and to abandon for good and all the valley in which he was born.