—Et qui plus est, il me semble que je n’ay rencontré guere de manieres, qui ne vaillent les nostres. Montaigne.
The great contrast which is observable between the manners and personal character of the Orientals and Europeans, insensibly leads to a comparison of its result in society. The character of every nation merits the attention of the philosopher; and the less that nation resembles ourselves, the more its distinguishing features require our investigation.
While vanity instigates us to claim an undisputed superiority, experience often compels us to doubt the validity of the sentence on which we insist. We are fearful of being reduced to acknowlege, that the labour, the thought, the agitation which have place among us, often augment not the happiness of the individual, and are of doubtful utility to the collective body. It is not however designed to insist on any such concession; and only a few considerations shall be offered in the order that they arise.
—Animo satis hæc vestigia parva sagaci
Sunt, per quæ possis cognoscere cætera tutè.
Lucretius.
Impatience, activity, and sanguine hope, are habits of an European. By education his imagination is exalted and his ideas are multiplied. By reading, and frequent intercourse with foreigners, he is enabled to present to himself the state of distant times and remote nations. Their knowlege, their arts, their pleasures become familiar to him; and, from a fixed principle of the human mind, the lively idea of all these advantages generates the hope of appropriating them. His first attempt is haply crowned with success, and he is thus stimulated to farther effort: but as the bounds fixed to his attainments are removed the farther he advances, and improvement is infinite, his ultimate disappointment is inevitable, and it is felt with a poignancy proportioned to the confidence of his first hopes.
The habits of the Oriental, on the contrary, are indolence, gravity, patience. His ideas are few in number; and his sentiments in course equally rare. They are, however, generally correct, springing from the objects around him, and for the most part limited to those objects.
A chief cause of this contrast, must be the mode of education in each community. Education should be the art of forming man on the principles of nature; by due attention to her unerring progress, no advantage of life can remain unimproved, and no duty can be misunderstood. But in no nation with whose history we are acquainted, has such a system been established. Almost every one forms its disciples on the narrow views of that community, and nature is distorted and paralised by authority.
The leading fault of education in the various parts of the Turkish empire, originates in the prevailing superstition. Wherever this does not operate, the practice is sufficiently rational.