XXVII. From this spirit of national prejudice, which prevails in
almost all histories, it happens, that with respect to an infinite
number of facts, the things which are past seem as uncertain to us, as
those which are to come. I acknowledge, that the historical Pyrrhonism
of Campanela was extravagant, who carried his want of confidence in
history to such a point, as to say, he doubted whether there ever was
an Emperor in the world named Charles the Great. But with respect to
those events, which the historians of one nation affirm, and those of
another deny; and as there are many such events, it will be prudent
for us to suspend our judgment, till some well-informed third person
shall decide upon them; for, excited either by vanity or inclination,
or led by condescension, every one goes on to flatter his own nation;
the light of truth at the same time, being concealed from the eyes of
the people, by the smoke of the incense of flattery, and the harmony of
adulation, preventing their listening to the voice of reason.
XXVIII. I shall not dwell upon those authors, who carried the passion
for their country, to lengths of extravagance, such as Goropius
Becanus, a native of Brabant, who very deliberately endeavoured to
prove, that the Flemish tongue was the first in the world; and Olaus
Rudbec, a Swede, who, in a book he wrote on purpose, tried to evince,
that all which the antients had said of the Fortunate Islands, the
garden of the Hesperides and Elysian fields, alluded to Sweden,
pronouncing at the same time, his own country to be the source and
perfection of European learning; and asserting, that letters and
the art of writing, did not descend from Phœnicia to Greece, but
from Phœnicia to Sweden; in the prosecution of which undertaking, he
rummaged out, and expended in waste, much hidden learning.
XXIX. It may also be proper to observe here, that another opposite
vicious extreme, if it is not derived from, arises in consequence of
this prejudice. It has been remarked by some, of a modern Spanish
author, that he has been guilty of unjustly denying to Spain, the
honour of some glorious antiquities, with a view of being applauded as
a sincere man among strangers. Perhaps this was not his motive, but
that his criticism was defective, for want of being tempered with a
due mixture of the indulgent and the severe; and that to avoid the
imputation of flattery, he ran into the opposite offensive extreme; for
_Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt._