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Page 16
There were others, who at first beheld her with indifference, and
unacquainted with her character, were cautious of her company. They
treated her as one, who, under the fair name of liberty, might conceal
the hideous figure of anarchy, or the gloomy monster of tyranny. They
knew not what she was. If fair, she was fair indeed. But still she was
suspected, and though born among us, appeared to be a stranger.
Accident, with some, and curiosity with others, brought on a distant
acquaintance. They ventured to look at her. They felt an inclination
to speak to her. One intimacy led to another, till the suspicion wore
away, and a change of sentiment stole gradually upon the mind; and
having no self-interest to serve, no passion of dishonour to gratify,
they became enamoured of her innocence, and unaltered by misfortune or
uninflamed by success, shared with fidelity in the varieties of her
fate.
This declaration of the Abbe's, respecting motives, has led me
unintendedly into a train of metaphysical reasoning; but there was no
other avenue by which it could so properly be approached. To place
presumption against presumption, assertion against assertion, is a
mode of opposition that has no effect; and therefore the more eligible
method was, to shew that the declaration does not correspond with the
natural progress of the mind, and the influence it has upon our
conduct.--I shall now quit this part, and proceed to what I have
before stated, namely, that it is not so properly the motives which
produced the alliance, as the consequences to be produced from it,
that mark out the field of philosophical reflections.
It is an observation I have already made in some former publication,
that the circle of civilization is yet incomplete. A mutuality of
wants have formed the individuals of each country into a kind of
national society, and here the progress of civilization has stopt.
For it is easy to see, that nations with regard to each other
(notwithstanding the ideal civil law, which every one explains as it
suits him) are like individuals in a state of nature. They are
regulated by no fixt principle, governed by no compulsive law, and
each does independently what it pleases, or what it can.
Were it possible we could have known the world when in a state of
barbarism, we might have concluded, that it never could be brought
into the order we now see it. The untamed mind was then as hard, if
not harder to work upon in its individual state, than the national
mind is in its present one. Yet we have seen the accomplishment of the
one, why then should we doubt that of the other?
There is a greater fitness in mankind to extend and complete the
civilization of nations with each other at this day, than there was to
begin it with the unconnected individuals at first; in the same manner
that it is somewhat easier to put together the materials of a machine
after they are formed, than it was to form them from original matter.
The present condition of the world, differing so exceedingly from what
it formerly was, has given a new cast to the mind of man, more than
what he appears to be sensible of. The wants of the individual, which
first produced the idea of society, are now augmented into the wants
of the nation, and he is obliged to seek from another country what
before he sought from the next person.
Letters, the tongue of the world, have in some measure brought all
mankind acquainted, and, by an extension of their uses, are every day
promoting some new friendship. Through them distant nations became
capable of conversation, and losing by degrees the awkwardness of
strangers, and the moroseness of suspicion, they learn to know and
understand each other. Science, the partizan of no country, but the
beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all
may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled
earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further
improvement. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the
philosopher of another: he takes his seat in the temple of science,
and asks not who sits beside him.
This was not the condition of the barbarian world. Then the wants of
man were few, and the objects within his reach. While he could acquire
these, he lived in a state of individual independence; the consequence
of which was, there were as many nations as persons, each contending
with the other, to secure something which he had, or to obtain
something which he had not. The world had then no business to follow,
no studies to exercise the mind. Their time was divided between sloth
and fatigue. Hunting and war were their chief occupations; sleep and
food their principal enjoyments.
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