Hor. But since the love, affection, and benevolence we naturally have for our species, is not greater than other creatures have for theirs, how comes it, that man gives more ample demonstrations of this love on thousand occasions, than any other animal?
Cleo. Because no other animal has the same capacity or opportunity to do it. But you may ask the same of his hatred: the greater knowledge and the more wealth and power a man has, the more capable he is of rendering others sensible of the passion he is affected with, as well when he hates as when he loves them. The more a man remains uncivilized, and the less he is removed from the state of nature, the less his love is to be depended upon.
Hor. There is more honesty and less deceit among plain, untaught people, than there is among those that are more artful; and therefore I should have looked for true love and unfeigned affection among those that live in a natural simplicity, rather than any where else.
Cleo. You speak of sincerity; but the love which I said was less to be depended upon in untaught than in civilized people, I supposed to be real and sincere in both. Artful people may dissemble love, and pretend to friendship, where they have none; but they are influenced by their passions and natural appetites as well as savages, though they gratify them in another manner: well-bred people behave themselves in the choice of diet and the taking of their repasts, very differently from savages; so they do in their amours; but hunger and lust are the same in both. An artful man, nay, the greatest hypocrite, whatever his behaviour is abroad, may love his wife and children at his heart, and the sincerest man can do no more. My business is to demonstrate to you, that the good qualities men compliment our nature and the whole species with, are the result of art and education. The reason why love is little to be depended upon in those that are uncivilized, is because the passions in them are more fleeting and inconstant; they oftener jostle out and succeed one another, than they are and do in well-bred people, persons that are well educated, have learned to study their ease and the comforts of life; to tie themselves up to rules and decorums for their own advantage, and often to submit to small inconveniencies to avoid greater. Among the lowest vulgar, and those of the meanest education of all, you seldom see a lasting harmony: you shall have a man and his wife that have a real affection for one another, be full of love one hour, and disagree the next for a trifle; and the lives of many are made miserable from no other faults in themselves, than their want of manners and discretion. Without design they will often talk imprudently, until they raise one another’s anger; which neither of them being able to stifle, she scolds at him; he beats her; she bursts out into tears; this moves him, he is sorry; both repent, and are friends again: and with all the sincerity imaginable resolve never to quarrel for the future, as long as they live: all this will pass between them in less than half a day, and will perhaps be repeated once a month, or oftener, as provocations offer, or either of them is more or less prone to anger. Affection never remained long uninterrupted between two persons without art; and the best friends, if they are always together, will fall out, unless great discretion be used on both sides.
Hor. I have always been of your opinion, that the more men were civilized the happier they were; but since nations can never be made polite but by length of time, and mankind must have been always miserable before they had written laws, how come poets and others to launch out so much in praise of the golden age, in which they pretend there was so much peace, love, and sincerity?
Cleo. For the same reason that heralds compliment obscure men of unknown extraction with illustrious pedigrees: as there is no mortal of high descent, but who values himself upon his family, so extolling the virtue and happiness of their ancestors, can never fail pleasing every member of a society: but what stress would you lay upon the fictions of poets?
Hor. You reason very clearly, and with great freedom, against all heathen superstition, and never suffer yourself to be imposed upon by any fraud from that quarter; but when you meet with any thing belonging to the Jewish or Christian religion, you are as credulous as any of the vulgar.
Cleo. I am sorry you should think so.
Hor. What I say is fact. A man that contentedly swallows every thing that is said of Noah and his ark, ought not to laugh at the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
Cleo. Is it as credible, that human creatures should spring from stones, because an old man and his wife threw them over their heads, as that a man and his family, with a great number of birds and beasts, should be preserved in a large ship, made convenient for that purpose?