14.3. 3. Contradiction in the Tempers of some Southern Nations.
The Indians
[5]
are naturally a pusillanimous people; even the children
[6]
of Europeans born in India lose the courage peculiar to their own climate.
But how shall we reconcile this with their customs and penances so full
of barbarity? The men voluntarily undergo the greatest hardships, and
the women burn themselves; here we find a very odd compound of fortitude
and weakness.
Nature, having framed those people of a texture so weak as to fill
them with timidity, has formed them at the same time of an imagination
so lively that every object makes the strongest impression upon them.
That delicacy of organs which renders them apprehensive of death
contributes likewise to make them dread a thousand things more than
death: the very same sensibility induces them to fly and dare all
dangers.
As a good education is more necessary to children than to such as
have arrived at maturity of understanding, so the inhabitants of those
countries have much greater need than the European nations of a wiser
legislator. The greater their sensibility, the more it behoves them to
receive proper impressions, to imbibe no prejudices, and to let
themselves be directed by reason.
At the time of the Romans the inhabitants of the north of Europe
were destitute of arts, education, and almost of laws; and yet the good
sense annexed to the gross fibres of those climates enabled them to make
an admirable stand against the power of Rome, till the memorable period
in which they quitted their woods to subvert that great empire.
Footnotes
[5]
"One hundred European soldiers," says Tavernier, "would without
any great difficulty beat a thousand Indian soldiers."
[6]
Even the Persians who settle in the Indies contract in the third
generation the indolence and cowardice of the Indians. See "Bernier on
the Mogul," tome i, p. 182.
