If you think I impose too great a task on our inquisitive traveller, my next advice is, That he stay at home: read Europe in the mirror of his own country, which but too eagerly reflects and flatters every state that dances before its surface; and, for the rest, take up with the best information he can get from the books and narratives of the best voyagers.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
That is, you discourage him from looking abroad into the world of reason and civility, the most natural state of mankind; and require him to waste his time and observation on slaves, madmen, or savages; states, in which reason and civility have no place, and where humanity itself, almost, disappears.
Admirable advice this, to come from a philosopher! and still better, to send your disciple to take his information of this unnatural disordered scene from the lying accounts of ignorant, ill-instructed, and gaping tale-tellers!
MR. LOCKE.
I was afraid, I should not be able to secure to myself the good opinion, which your Lordship was pleased to express of my knowledge of human nature. This mortifying experience puts an end to my adventurous flights, at once; and forces me back again into the narrower walk, which your Lordship seems willing to prescribe to me.
Be it then, as you insist, that an English gentleman’s care should be, to accomplish himself in the school of reason and civility; to fit himself, in short, for that state which your Lordship dignifies with the name of natural. Still I declare against his European travels.
The manners of each state are peculiar to itself, and best adapted to it. The civility, that prevails in some places on the continent, may be more studied and exquisite than ours; but not therefore to be preferred before it. Those refinements have had their birth from correspondent policies; to which they are well suited, and from which they receive their whole value. In the more absolute monarchies of Europe, all are courtiers. In our freer monarchy, all should be citizens. Let then the arts of address and insinuation flourish in France. Without them, what merit can pretend to success, what talents open the way to favour and distinction? But let a manlier character prevail here. We have a prince to serve, not to flatter: we have a country to embrace, not a court to adore: we have, in a word, objects to pursue, and interests to promote, from the care of which our finer neighbours are happily disburthened.
Let our countrymen then be indulged in the plainness, nay, the roughness of their manners: but let them atone for this defect, by their useful sense, their superior knowledge, their public spirit, and, above all, by their unpolished integrity.
Would your Lordship’s favourite Athens have done wisely (or rather did it do so?) to exchange the simplicity and manly freedom of its ancient character, for the fopperies and prostrations of the Asiatic courts? Nay, would the softer accomplishments of Athens, in its best state, have done well in a citizen of Sparta?