reduce the
other to despair. The first sighs for nothing but repose and liberty;
he desires only to live, and to be exempt from labour; nay, the
ataraxy of the most confirmed Stoic falls short of his consummate
indifference for every other object. On the contrary, the citizen
always in motion, is perpetually sweating and toiling, and racking his
brains to find out occupations still more laborious: He continues a
drudge to his last minute; nay, he courts death to be able to live, or
renounces life to acquire immortality. He cringes to men in power whom
he hates, and to rich men whom he despises; he sticks at nothing to
have the honour of serving them; he is not ashamed to value himself on
his own weakness and the protection they afford him; and proud of his
chains, he speaks with disdain of those who have not the honour of
being the partner of his bondage. What a spectacle must the painful
and envied labours of an European minister of state form in the eyes
of a Caribbean! How many cruel deaths would not this indolent savage
prefer to such a horrid life, which very often is not even sweetened
by the pleasure of doing good? But to see the drift of so many cares,
his mind should first have affixed some meaning to these words power
and reputation; he should be apprised that there are men who consider
as something the looks of the rest of mankind, who know how to be
happy and satisfied with themselves on the testimony of others sooner
than upon their own. In fact, the real source of all those
differences, is that the savage lives within himself, whereas the
citizen, constantly beside himself, knows only how to live in the
opinion of others; insomuch that it is, if I may say so, merely from
their judgment that he derives the consciousness of his own existence.
It is foreign to my subject to show how this disposition engenders so
much indifference for good and evil, notwithstanding so many and such
fine discourses of morality; how everything, being reduced to
appearances, becomes mere art and mummery; honour, friendship, virtue,
and often vice itself, which we at last learn the secret to boast of;
how, in short, ever inquiring of others what we are, and never daring
to question ourselves on so delicate a point, in the midst of so much
philosophy, humanity, and politeness, and so many sublime maxims, we
have nothing to show for ourselves but a deceitful and frivolous
exterior, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and p