Monkeys are more like merry-andrews than a regularly governed people; they do not appear associated under fixed and fundamental laws, like the species previously noticed.
We resemble monkeys more than any other animals in the talent of imitation, in the levity of our ideas, and in that inconstancy which has always prevented our having uniform and durable laws.
When nature formed our species, and imparted to us a certain portion of instinct, self-love for our own preservation, benevolence for the safety and comfort of others, love which is common to every class of animal being, and the inexplicable gift of combining more ideas than all the inferior animals together—after bestowing on us this outfit she said to us: "Go, and do the best you can."
There is not a good code of laws in any single country. The reason is obvious: laws have been made for particular purposes, according to time, place, exigencies, and not with general and systematic views.
When the exigencies upon which laws were founded are changed or removed, the laws themselves become ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade eating pork and drinking wine was perfectly reasonable in Arabia, where pork and wine are injurious; but at Constantinople it is absurd.
The law which confers the whole fief or landed property on the eldest son, is a very good one in a time of general anarchy and pillage. The eldest is then the commander of the castle, which sooner or later will be attacked by brigands; the younger brothers will be his chief officers, and the laborers his soldiers. All that is to be apprehended is that the younger brother may assassinate or poison the elder, his liege lord, in order to become himself the master of the premises; but such instances are uncommon, because nature has so combined our instincts and passions, that we feel a stronger horror against assassinating our elder brother, than we feel a desire to succeed to his authority and estate. But this law, which was suitable enough to the owners of the gloomy, secluded, and turreted mansions, in the days of Chilperic, is detestable when the case relates wholly to the division of family property in a civilized and well-governed city.
To the disgrace of mankind, the laws of play or gaming are, it is well known, the only ones that are throughout just, clear, inviolable, and carried into impartial and perfect execution. Why is the Indian who laid down the laws of a game of chess willingly and promptly obeyed all over the world, while the decretals of the popes, for example, are at present an object of horror and contempt? The reason is, that the inventor of chess combined everything with caution and exactness for the satisfaction of the players, and that the popes in their decretals looked solely to their own advantage. The Indian was desirous at once of exercising the minds of men and furnishing them with amusement; the popes were desirous of debasing and brutifying them. Accordingly, the game of chess has remained substantially the same for upwards of five thousand years, and is common to all the inhabitants of the earth; while the decretals are known only at Spoleto, Orvieto, and Loretto, and are there secretly despised even by the most shallow and contemptible of the practitioners.
SECTION IV.
During the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, when the Romans were disembowelling the Jews, a rich Israelite fled with all the gold he had accumulated by his occupation as a usurer, and conveyed to Ezion-Geber the whole of his family, which consisted of his wife, then far advanced in years, a son, and a daughter; he had in his train two eunuchs, one of whom acted as a cook, and the other as a laborer and vine-dresser; and a pious Essenian, who knew the Pentateuch completely by heart, acted as his almoner. All these embarked at the port of Ezion-Geber, traversed the sea commonly called Red, although it is far from being so, and entered the Persian Gulf to go in search of the land of Ophir, without knowing where it was. A dreadful tempest soon after this came on, which drove the Hebrew family towards the coast of India; and the vessel was wrecked on one of the Maldive islands now called Padrabranca, but which was at that time uninhabited.
The old usurer and his wife were drowned; the son and daughter, the two eunuchs, and the almoner were saved. They took as much of the provisions out of the wreck as they were able; erected for themselves little cabins on the island, and lived there with considerable convenience and comfort. You are aware that the island of Padrabranca is within five degrees of the line, and that it furnishes the largest cocoanuts and the best pineapples in the world; it was pleasant to have such a lovely asylum at a time when the favorite people of God were elsewhere exposed to persecution and massacre; but the Essenian could not refrain from tears when he reflected, that perhaps those on that happy island were the only Jews remaining on the earth, and that the seed of Abraham was to be annihilated.