The traveller must not generalize on the spot, however true may be his apprehension—however firm his grasp, of one or more facts. A raw English traveller in China was entertained by a host who was intoxicated, and a hostess who was red-haired; he immediately made a note of the fact that all the men in China were drunkards, and all the women red-haired. A raw Chinese traveller in England was landed by a Thames waterman who had a wooden leg. The stranger saw that the wooden leg was used to stand in the water with, while the other was high and dry. The apparent economy of the fact struck the Chinese; he saw in it strong evidence of design, and wrote home that in England one-legged men are kept for watermen, to the saving of all injury to health, shoe, and stocking, from standing in the river. These anecdotes exhibit but a slight exaggeration of the generalizing tendencies of many modern travellers. They are not so much worse than some recent tourists' tales, as they are better than the old narratives of "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders."
Natural philosophers do not dream of generalizing with any such speed as that used by the observers of men; yet they might do it with more safety, at the risk of an incalculably smaller mischief. The geologist and the chemist make a large collection of particular appearances, before they commit themselves to propound a principle drawn from them, though their subject matter is far less diversified than the human subject, and nothing of so much importance as human emotions,—love and dislike, reverence and contempt, depends upon their judgment. If a student in natural philosophy is in too great haste to classify and interpret, he misleads, for a while, his fellow-students (not a very large class); he vitiates the observations of a few successors; his error is discovered and exposed; he is mortified, and his too docile followers are ridiculed, and there is an end; but if a traveller gives any quality which he may have observed in a few individuals as a characteristic of a nation, the evil is not speedily or easily remediable. Abject thinkers, passive readers, adopt his words; parents repeat them to their children; and townspeople spread the judgment into the villages and hamlets—the strongholds of prejudice; future travellers see according to the prepossessions given them, and add their testimony to the error, till it becomes the work of a century to reverse a hasty generalization. It was a great mistake of a geologist to assign a wrong level to the Caspian Sea; and it is vexatious that much time and energy should have been devoted to account for an appearance which, after all, does not exist. It is provoking to geologists that they should have wasted a great deal of ingenuity in finding reasons for these waters being at a different level from what it is now found that they have; but the evil is over; the "pish!" and the "pshaw!" are said; the explanatory and apologetical notes are duly inserted in new editions of geological works, and nothing more can come of the mistake. But it is difficult to foresee when the British public will believe that the Americans are a mirthful nation, or even that the French are not almost all cooks or dancing-masters. A century hence, probably, the Americans will continue to believe that all the English make a regular study of the art of conversation; and the lower orders of French will be still telling their children that half the people in England hang or drown themselves every November. As long as travellers generalize on morals and manners as hastily as they do, it will probably be impossible to establish a general conviction that no civilized nation is ascertainably better or worse than any other on this side barbarism, the whole field of morals being taken into the view. As long as travellers continue to neglect the safe means of generalization which are within the reach of all, and build theories upon the manifestations of individual minds, there is little hope of inspiring men with that spirit of impartiality, mutual deference, and love, which are the best enlighteners of the eyes and rectifiers of the understanding.
Above all things, the traveller must not despair of good results from his observations. Because he cannot establish true conclusions by imperfect means, he is not to desist from doing anything at all. Because he cannot safely generalize in one way, it does not follow that there is no other way. There are methods of safe generalization of which I shall speak by-and-by. But, if there were not such within his reach, if his only materials were the discourse, the opinions, the feelings, the way of life, the looks, dress, and manners of individuals, he might still afford important contributions to science by his observations on as wide a variety of these as he can bring within his mental grasp. The experience of a large number of observers would in time yield materials from which a cautious philosopher might draw conclusions. It is a safe rule, in morals as in physics, that no fact is without its use. Every observer and recorder is fulfilling a function; and no one observer or recorder ought to feel discouragement, as long as he desires to be useful rather than shining; to be the servant rather than the lord of science, and a friend to the home-stayers rather than their dictator.
One of the wisest men living writes to me, "No books are so little to be trusted as travels. All travellers do and must generalize too rapidly. Most, if not all, take a fact for a principle, or the exception for the rule, more or less; and the quickest minds, which love to reason and explain more than to observe with patience, go most astray. My faith in travels received a mortal wound when I travelled. I read, as I went along, the books of those who had preceded me, and found that we did not see with the same eyes. Even descriptions of nature proved false. The traveller had viewed the prospect at a different season, or in a different light, and substituted the transient for the fixed. Still I think travels useful. Different accounts give means of approximation to truth; and by-and-by what is fixed and essential in a people will be brought out."
It ought to be an animating thought to a traveller that, even if it be not in his power to settle any one point respecting the morals and manners of an empire, he can infallibly aid in supplying means of approximation to truth, and of bringing out "what is fixed and essential in a people." This should be sufficient to stimulate his exertions and satisfy his ambition.
CHAPTER I.
PHILOSOPHICAL REQUISITES.
"Only I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses; yet I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the essay than it now seems at a distance."—Milton.
There are two parties to the work of observation on Morals and Manners—the observer and the observed. This is an important fact which the traveller seldom dwells upon as he ought; yet a moment's consideration shows that the mind of the observer—the instrument by which the work is done, is as essential as the material to be wrought. If the instrument be in bad order, it will furnish a bad product, be the material what it may. In this chapter I shall point out what requisites the traveller ought to make sure that he is possessed of before he undertakes to offer observations on the Morals and Manners of a people.