III. Even those feats of prowess of the antients, which are so blazoned and immortalized by fame, as the ultimate exertions of zeal for the public good, were more probably generated by ambition, and the love of glory, than by the love of their country; and I am inclined to think, that if there had not been witnesses present, to have handed down to posterity an account of their exploits, that from a principle of love to his country, neither Curtius would have precipitated himself into the pit, nor Marcus Attilius Regulus have submitted to die a lingering death in an iron cage; nor would the twin brothers, for the sake of extending the boundaries of Carthage, have consented to be buried alive. The incitement of posthumous fame had great influence among the Gentiles; and it might also happen, that some rushed on a violent death, not so much with a view of acquiring posthumous fame, as from the mad vanity of seeing themselves admired and applauded for a few instants of their lives, of which Lucian gives us a striking example, in the death that was submitted to by the philosopher Peregrinus.
IV. Among the Romans, the love of their country, was so much in vogue and so prevalent, that it seemed as if this noble inclination was the soul of their whole republic. But what appears to me is, that the Romans themselves, on account of Cato’s constant and steady attachment to the public, looked upon him as a very uncommon man, and as one descended from Heaven. It may be said of all the rest of them, almost without exception, that in serving their country, they sought more their own exaltation than the public utility. They gave Cicero the glorious surname of father of his country, for the successful and vigorous opposition he made to Catiline’s conspiracy. This in appearance was a great merit, although in reality it was but an equivocal one; for not only the success of Cicero’s attaining the consulate, depended upon that fury’s not carrying his point, but his life also; for it is true, that when afterwards Cæsar tyrannized over the republic, Cicero accommodated himself very well with him. The subornations of Jugurtha, King of Numidia, shewed abundantly, what sort of spirit influenced the Roman senate; which, contrary to the interest of the republic, tolerated in that penetrating and violent Prince, many grave and pernicious evils, because every new insolence he committed, was accompanied with a new present to the senators. He was at last brought to Rome, and detained there; and although he was so far from correcting or reforming his old practices, that within the city itself, he committed new and enormous offences; by the favour of gold, he was permitted to go at large, which in the delinquent himself begot such a contempt of that government, that when he left Rome, after getting at a little distance from the city, he turned about, and looking at it with disdain, called it a venal city, adding, that it would soon perish, if any one could find money enough to pay the price of its ruin: Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem invenirit (Sallust in Jugurtha). The same thing, and even more pointedly, was said by Petronius:
Venalis populus, venalis curia patrem.
This is a picture of the love of their country so celebrated among the Romans, and to which many at this day, judge they owed the enormous extension of the Roman empire.
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.