V. Our opinion of this matter differs greatly from that of the bulk of
mankind, by whom it is generally believed, the love of their country
is natural to, and transcendent in all men; and as a proof of it, they
alledge the repugnance, which all, or nearly all men feel at abandoning
the country in which they were born, to go and reside in any other
whatever; but I find here a great equivocation, and that what men call
the love of their country, is in reality, nothing else but the love
of their own convenience. There is no man who does not leave his own
country cheerfully, when he has expectations by going to another of
mending his fortune; and examples of this sort are seen every day. Of
all the fables that have been fabricated by the poets, there is no one
appears to be more void of probability, than that of Ulysses’s having
preferred the dreary and unpleasant rocks and craigs of his own country
Ithaca, to the immortality full of delights, which was offered him by
the nymph Calipso, upon condition that he would come and live with her
in the island of Ogygia.
VI. I may be told, that the Scythians, as Ovid testifies, fled from
the delicacies of Rome, to the asperities of their own frozen soil;
that the Laplanders, maugre all the conveniences and accommodations
that were offered them at Vienna, sighed to return to their own poor
steril country; and that but a few years ago, a Canadian savage who
was brought to Paris, where he was furnished with every possible
convenience, lived there in a seeming state of affliction and
melancholy.
VII. I say in answer to all this, that it is true; but it is also true,
that these men live with more convenience to themselves in Scythia,
in Lapland, and in Canada, than in Vienna, at Paris, or in Rome.
Habituated to the food of their country, however hard and coarse it
may appear to us, they find it both grateful and salutary. They are
born among snow, and live pleasantly in the midst of it; and as we
cannot bear the cold of northern regions, they cannot endure the heat
of southern ones. Their mode of government, is suited to their tempers
and dispositions, and although the form is but indifferent, they being
reconciled to it by custom, believe that nature itself never dictated
any other. Our policy seems as barbarous to them, as theirs does to
us. Here, we think it impossible to live without a house or permanent
abode; they look upon this as a voluntary imprisonment, and regard it
as much more convenient, to be at liberty to change their habitation,
when, and unto wherever it is most agreeable to them, fabricating it in
the evening, for the use of the night and the next day, either in the
valley, on the side of the mountain, or in the plain. The accommodation
afforded by changing situations as the seasons of the year vary,
is enjoyed among us, by none but the great and the opulent; among
those barbarians, there is no one who does not enjoy it; and I must
confess for myself, that I look upon a man’s having power, whenever
he pleases, to remove from a disagreeable neighbourhood, and settle
himself in one he likes better, as a very enviable happiness.
VIII. Olaus Rudbec, a noble Swede, who had travelled a great deal
through the northern regions, in a book that he wrote, intitled
_Lapland Illustrated_, says, that the inhabitants of it, are so
convinced of the advantages of their situation, that they would not
exchange their own, for all the countries in the world. In fact, they
possess some benefits or conveniencies in it, which are not imaginary,
but real. That country, produces some regaling fruits, although they
are different from ours; and the abundance of game and fish in it, all
of them remarkably fine flavoured, is immense. The winters, which with
us are so disagreeably damp and rainy, are there clear and serene;
from whence it follows, that the natives are active, healthy, and
robust. Thunder storms are scarce ever known in that region, nor is
there a venomous snake to be found in all the country. They live also
exempt from those two great scourges of Heaven, war and pestilence,
their climate defending them from both these visitations, it being as
obnoxious to strangers and the plague, as it is healthy to the natives.
The snow does not incommode them, for by their natural agility, added
to art and contrivance they fly over the tops of the snowy heights like
crows. The multitude of white bears with which the country abounds,
serves them for amusement and diversion; for they are so dextrous in
combating these fierce animals, that there is scarce a Laplander, who
does not kill many of them in a year, although it is very rare, that a
Laplander is ever killed by one of them.
IX. We may add, that the long nights in those subpolar regions, of
which they give us so horrible a representation, are not so dismal as
they are imagined to be. They hardly experience total darkness there
above one whole month; the reason is, because the sun descends below
his horizon only twenty-three degrees and a half; and according to the
computation of astronomers, the twilight may be perceived at eighteen
degrees of depression. Neither does the apparent absence of the sun
continue for six months, as it is commonly thought, but for five only,
for on account of the great refraction of the rays in that atmosphere,
you see the sun, half a month before it mounts above the horizon, and
for the same space of time after it descends below it. Some Dutchmen
in a northern voyage they made in 1596, being in the latitude of 76,
were vastly astonished at seeing the sun fifteen or sixteen days before
they expected to see it. In our discourse on mathematical paradoxes,
we explained this phænomenon, and shewed, that by attending to, and
computing all things, those who inhabit near the Poles, enjoy the light
of the sun for a greater portion of the year, than those who live in
the temperate and torrid zones; therefore what is said of the equal
repartition of light all over the world, although it is generally
assented to, is not true.
X. We much admire, and live very happily on the aliments we commonly
use; but there is no nation, to which the same thing does not
happen. The people of the northern regions, find the flesh of bears,
wolves, and foxes, very savoury and regaling. The Tartars are fond
of horse-flesh; the Arabs of the flesh of camels; and the Africans
and Chinese, of that of dogs; for they both eat and sell them in the
markets as we do pig pork. In some regions of Africa, they eat monkies,
crocodiles, and serpents; and Scaliger says, that in various parts of
the east, bats are esteemed as regaling a dish, as chickens are with us.
XI. The same that happens in point of food, happens with respect to
everything else, for whether it proceeds from the force of habit or the
proportion of temperament or disposition of each nation respectively,
or that things of the same species, have different qualities in
different countries, which make them more or less commodious or
agreeable; every one finds himself better satisfied with the things of
his own country, than with those of a foreign one, and he is therefore
attached to it, because he feels his own convenience better gratified
there, and his partiality for it is not influenced by the supposed love
of his country.
XII. The inhabitants of the Marian islands, which are so called
from Dona Mariana of Austria, who sent missionaries among them for
their conversion, made no use of, nor had any knowledge of fire.
Who, however, would venture to assert, that this element was not
indispensably necessary to human life, or that there was any nation
whatever, which could subsist without it? But notwithstanding this,
those islanders, without fire, lived contented and happy. They were
not sensible of the want of it, because they did not know it. Roots,
fruit, and crude fish, were all their aliment; and still they were more
healthy and robust than we, for living to a hundred years of age, was
very frequent and common among them.
XIII. The force of custom is amazingly powerful, for it is capable of
not only making the greatest asperities sufferable, but by peoples
being familiarized to them, it also causes their being satisfied
under them. He who was not well apprized of this truth, would be led
to think what passed between Esteban King of Poland, and the Peasants
of Livonia, incredible. This glorious Prince having observed, that
these poor people were cruelly and very ill-treated by the nobles of
the province, convened them together, and after condoling with them
on their misery, told them, he proposed to make their subjection less
severe and easier to be tolerated, by restraining the exercise of power
in the nobility, within more mild and moderate bounds; but wonderful to
relate, instead of seeming sensible of his benevolence, and embracing
the offer he made them, they threw themselves at his feet, and begged
he would not alter their customs, with which, through long usage, they
were quite satisfied. What will not the force of habit conquer, if it
is capable of making tyranny agreeable! Join to this, the circumstance
of the Muscovite women, who are not happy or contented, unless their
husbands, without their giving them any occasion for it, beat or cudgel
them every day, regarding this unprovoked ill-treatment, as a token of
their great love for them.
XIV. We may add to the foregoing remarks, that an uniformity of
language, religion, and customs, makes the intercourse with our
countrymen grateful and pleasing, as a diversity in those matters,
makes the society of strangers aukward and unentertaining. Our
particular connections and personal friendships also, tend to produce
the same effect; and generally speaking, the love of convenience, and
of that private ease and happiness, which every man finds in his own
country, is what attracts him to, and retains him in it, and not the
love of the country itself. He who should experience better personal
accommodation in another region, would do as St. Peter did, who, as
soon as he found himself happily situated on Mount Tabor, resolved to
fix his lasting abode on that eminence, and to abandon for good and all
the valley in which he was born.