Kindle Notes & Highlights
If such judgments were attempted, would they not be as various as those who make them? And would they not, after all, if closely looked into, reveal more of the mind of the observer than of the observed?
If he diverges, from time to time, from the high road,—if he winds about among villages, and crosses mountains, to dip into the hamlets of the valleys,—he still pursues only a line, and does not command the expanse; he is furnished, at best, with no more than a sample of the people; and whether they be indeed a sample, must remain a conjecture which he has no means of verifying.
The traveller must deny himself all indulgence of peremptory decision, not only in public on his return, but in his journal, and in his most superficial thoughts.
The traveller must not generalize on the spot, however true may be his apprehension—however firm his grasp, of one or more facts.
The external conveniences of men, their internal emotions and affections, their social arrangements, graduate in importance precisely in proportion as they affect the general happiness of the section of the race among whom they exist.
to shut the door is as cruel an act in a Hindoo hut as to leave it open in a Greenland cabin.
Being provided with a conviction of what it is that he wants to know, the traveller must be furthermore furnished with the means of gaining the knowledge he wants.
It is not enough for a traveller to have an active understanding, equal to an accurate perception of individual facts in themselves; he must also be in possession of principles which may serve as a rallying point for his observations, and without which he cannot determine their bearings, or be secure of putting a right interpretation upon them.
All senses, and intellectual powers, and good habits, may be considered essential to a perfect observation of morals and manners; but almost any one might be better spared than a provision of principles which may serve as a rallying point and a test of facts.
Every true report is a great good; every untrue report is a great mischief. Therefore, let there be none given but by persons in some good degree qualified.
The true philosopher, the worthy observer, first contemplates in imagination the area of humanity, and then ascertains what principles of morals are applicable to them all, and judges by these.
only in its relation to the whole of the race can any one people be judged.
The chief evil of moral notions being vague or traditional is, that they are irreconcileable with liberality of judgment; and the great benefit of an ascertainment of the primary principles of morals is, that such an investigation dissolves prejudice, and casts a full light upon many things which cease to be fearful and painful when they are no longer obscure.
Most persons who take no great pains to think for themselves, have a notion that every human being has feelings, or a conscience, born with him, by which he knows, if he will only attend to it, exactly what is right and wrong; and that, as right and wrong are fixed and immutable, all ought to agree as to what is sin and virtue in every case.
no doctrines yet invented have accounted for some total revolutions in the ideas of right and wrong, which have occurred in the course of ages.
The observer who sets out with a more philosophical belief, not only escapes the affliction of seeing sin wherever he sees difference, and avoids the suffering of contempt and alienation from his species, but, by being prepared for what he witnesses, and aware of the causes, is free from the agitation of being shocked and alarmed, preserves his calmness, his hope, his sympathy; and is thus far better fitted to perceive, understand, and report upon the morals and manners of the people he visits.
every man's feelings of right and wrong, instead of being born with him, grow up in him from the influences to which he is subjected.
all men entertain one common conviction, that what makes people happy is good and right, and that what makes them miserable is evil and wrong.
His first general principle is, that the law of nature is the only one by which mankind at large can be judged. His second must be, that every prevalent virtue or vice is the result of the particular circumstances amidst which the society exists.
1stly. With a certainty of what it is that he wants to know,— 2ndly. With principles which may serve as a rallying point and test of his observations,— 3rdly. With, for instance, a philosophical and definite, instead of a popular and vague, notion about the origin of human feelings of right and wrong,— 4thly. And with a settled conviction that prevalent virtues and vices are the result of gigantic general influences,—is yet not fitted for his object if certain moral requisites be wanting in him.
An observer, to be perfectly accurate, should be himself perfect. Every prejudice, every moral perversion, dims or distorts whatever the eye looks upon.
Unless a traveller interprets by his sympathies what he sees, he cannot but misunderstand the greater part of that which comes under his observation.
Men not only see according to the light they shed from their own breasts,—whether it be the sunshine of generosity or the hell-flames of bad passions,—but they attract to themselves spirits like their own. The very same persons appear very differently to a traveller who calls into exercise all their best qualities, and to one who has an affinity with their worst: but it is a yet more important consideration that actually different elements of society will range themselves round the observer according to the scepticism or faith of his temper, the purity or depravity of his tastes, and the
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the wisest and happiest traveller is the pedestrian.
One peculiar advantage of pedestrian travelling is the pleasure of a gradual approach to celebrated or beautiful places. Every turn of the road gains in interest; every object that meets the eye seems to have some initiative meaning; and when the object itself at last appears, nothing can surpass the delight of flinging one's self on the ground to rest upon the first impression, and to interpose a delicious pause before the final attainment.
The grand secret of wise inquiry into Morals and Manners is to begin with the study of THINGS, using the DISCOURSE OF PERSONS as a commentary upon them.
The voice of a whole people goes up in the silent workings of an institution; the condition of the masses is reflected from the surface of a record. The Institutions of a nation,—political, religious, or social,—put evidence into the observer's hands as to its capabilities and wants which the study of individuals could not yield in the course of a lifetime.
The usual scholastic division of Morals is into personal, domestic, and social or political morals.
"Dieu nous a dit, Peuples, je vous attends." De Beranger.
general rule that a bad name changes that to which it is affixed into a bad quality.—Hannah
The superstitions of the ascetic arise from the spirit of fear; those of the heathen arise perhaps equally from the spirit of love and the spirit of fear.
Suicide in the largest sense is here intended,—the voluntary surrender of life from any cause.
Persons who shrink from suffering so far as to withdraw from their duties, and to forsake those to whom their exertions are due, are objects of contemptuous compassion in the present day, when, moral having succeeded to physical force in men's esteem, it is seen to be nobler to endure evils than to hide one's spirit from them.
The truth is that, whatever may be the moral state of nations when the human world emerges hereafter from its infancy, high spiritual qualities are now matters of individual concern, as those of the intellectual class were once; and their general prevalence is a matter of prospective vision alone.
He will find no better place of study than the Cemetery,—no more instructive teaching than Monumental Inscriptions. The brief language of the dead will teach him more than the longest discourses of the living.
It tells that the supreme honour of men was to be brave, and of women to be chaste; excluding the supposition of each sharing the virtue of the other: whereas, when courage and purity shall be understood in their full signification, it will have become essential to the honour of a noble family that all the sons should be also pure, and all the daughters brave. Then bravery will signify moral rather than physical courage, and purity of mind will be considered no attribute of sex.
There is not a domestic attachment or social relation which is not necessarily modified, elevated, or depressed by the conviction of its being transient or immortal,—an end or means to a higher end.
The traveller must talk with Old People, and see what is the character of the garrulity of age. He must talk with Children, and mark the character of the aspirations of childhood.
Learn what people glory in, and you learn much of both the theory and practice of their morals. All nations, like all individuals, have pride, sooner or later, in one thing or another. It is a stage through which they have to pass in their moral progression, and out of which the most civilized have not yet advanced, nor discerned that they will have to advance, though the passion becomes moderated at each remove from barbarism.
Man-worship is as universal a practice as that of the higher sort of religion. As men everywhere adore some supposed agents of unseen things, they are, in like manner, disposed to do homage to what is venerable when it is presented to their eyes in the actions of a living man.
Every community has its saints, its heroes, its sages,—whose tombs are visited, whose deeds are celebrated, whose words have become the rules by which men live.
Now, the moral taste of a people is nowhere more clearly shown than in its choice of idols.
Side by side with this lies the inquiry into the great Epochs of the society visited. Find out what individuals and nations date from, and you discover what events are most interesting to them. A child reckons from his first journey, or his entrance upon school: a man from his marriage, his beginning practice in his profession, or forming a fresh partnership in trade; if he be a farmer, from the year of a good or bad crop; if he be a merchant, from the season of a currency pressure; if he be an operative, from the winter of the Strike: a matron dates from the birth of her children; her
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The treatment of the Guilty is all-important as an index to the moral notions of a society. This class of facts will hereafter yield infallible inferences as to the principles and views of governments and people upon vice, its causes and remedies.
There is another species of evidence of which travellers are not in the habit of making use, but which is well worth their attention,—the Conversation of convicted Criminals. There are not many places in the world where it is possible to obtain this, without a greater sacrifice of comfort than the ordinary tourist is disposed to make. There is little temptation to enter prisons where squalid wretches are crowded together in dirt, noise, and utter profligacy; where no one of them could speak seriously for fear of the ridicule of his comrades; where the father sees his young son corrupted before
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Of the offences against the person, some are occasioned by the bad habits which attend the practice of depredation on property; thieves are drunkards, and drunkards are brawlers:—but the greater number arise out of domestic miseries.
From the tales of convicts,—how they were reared, what was the nature of the snares into which they fell, what opportunity of retrieving themselves remained, and what was the character of the influences which sank them into misery,—much cannot but be learned of the moral atmosphere in which they were reared.
It appears that popular songs are both the cause and effect of general morals: that they are first formed, and then react.
What the traveller has to look to is, that he does not take one aspect of the popular mind for the whole, or a temporary state of the popular mind for a permanent one,—though, from the powerful action of national song, this temporary state is likely to become a permanent one by its means.
It is clear that we cannot know the mind of a nation, any more than of an individual, by merely looking at it, without hearing any speech. National literature is national speech. By this are its prevalent ideas and feelings uttered. It is necessarily so; for books which do not meet sympathy from numbers die immediately, and books which strike upon the sympathies of all never die.
