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.
SECT. III.
XV. It is also true, that not only real, but imaginary conveniences, have their influence, to promote an adherence to our country. Entertaining a flattering opinion of the country in which we were born, and preferring it to all others in the world, is one of the most common of all common errors. There is scarce any man, and among the lower class of people not a single one, who does not think his own country the first production of nature, and abounding in a three-fold proportion, with all the goods she distributes, either with respect to the genius or ability of the natives, the fertility of the soil, or the happiness of the climate. To understandings of inferior rank, near objects are represented as by the corporeal eye, which although they are really less, appear larger than things at a distance. In his nation only, are to be found learned and wise men, those of other kingdoms are hardly civilized; the customs of his country only are rational, and the language of it is the only soft and sufferable one; the hearing a stranger speak, as effectually excites them to laughter, as seeing Jack Pudding on a stage; his nation only abounds in riches, and the Prince of it is the only powerful one. At the end of the last century, when the arms of France were so prevalent, a junto of people at Salamanca being talking on this subject, a low Portugueze who was among them, with an air of great sagacity and importance, made the following political remark: There is certainly now no Prince in Europe capable of resisting the King of France, except the King of Portugal. But what Michael Montona, in his treatise intitled Moral Reflections, relates of a rustic Savoyard, is more extravagant still, who said, I don’t believe the King of France has the ability he is said to have, for if that was the case, he would have negotiated with our Duke long ago, about making him his Major Domo. Nearly after this manner, do all the low vulgar discourse of the things of their own country.
XVI. Neither are many of those exempted from so gross an error, although it is in a less degree, who by their birth or professions, are much superior to the lower class of people. The number of vulgar who do not associate with the common herd, but are intruded among people of understanding, is infinite. How many men of school learning, whose heads were stored with texts, have I seen filled with the caprice, that our nation is the only seat of knowledge and learning, and that in other countries, they print nothing but puerilities and bagatelles, more especially if they write in their own native idiom; nor does it appear to them, that any thing worth reading, can be published in French or Italian, which is in a manner maintaining, that the most important truths can’t be expressed or explained in other languages, although it is certain, the Apostles expounded the most essential and sublime ones in all tongues. But strangers are sufficiently revenged on us for this conceitedness, for in return for our considering them as people of little learning, they look upon us as illiberal and barbarous. Thus in all countries, you will find this piece of bad road to travel through, which is worn in holes and made rough, by the hacknied passage of carriages, loaded with the high notions and opinions the natives have of themselves, and the low ones they entertain of strangers.
SECT. IV.
XVII. The worst is, that those who do not think with the vulgar, talk like the vulgar. This proceeds, from what we call national passion or prejudice, the legitimate child of vanity, and emulation. Vanity teaches us, that we are interested in our nation being esteemed superior to all others, because every individual looks upon himself as a partaker in the pre-eminence; and emulation causes us to view strangers, especially those who are nearest us, with a jealous eye, and also inclines us to wish their abasement for our own security. From both these motives, people attribute to their own country, a thousand feigned excellencies, although at the time they mention them, they know they are fictitious.