d virtuous soul is easily caught with
dreams of happiness; but a cruel reality constantly awakens it to
suffering and wretchedness. The more I meditate on the nature of man,
the more I examine the present state of societies, the less possible it
appears to realize a world of wisdom and felicity. I cast my eye over
the whole of our hemisphere; I perceive in no place the germ, nor do
I foresee the instinctive energy of a happy revolution. All Asia lies
buried in profound darkness. The Chinese, governed by an insolent
despotism,* by strokes of the bamboo and the cast of lots, restrained
by an immutable code of gestures, and by the radical vices of an
ill-constructed language,** appear to be in their abortive civilization
nothing but a race of automatons. The Indian, borne down by prejudices,
and enchained in the sacred fetters of his castes, vegetates in an
incurable apathy. The Tartar, wandering or fixed, always ignorant and
ferocious, lives in the savageness of his ancestors. The Arab, endowed
with a happy genius, loses its force and the fruits of his virtue in
the anarchy of his tribes and the jealousy of his families. The African,
degraded from the rank of man, seems irrevocably doomed to servitude.
In the North I see nothing but vilified serfs, herds of men with which
landlords stock their estates. Ignorance, tyranny, and wretchedness
have everywhere stupified the nations; and vicious habits, depraving
the natural senses, have destroyed the very instinct of happiness and of
truth.

* The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that
is, of God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material
of heaven, the arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.
"The emperor only shows himself once in ten months, lest the
people, accustomed to see him, might lose their respect; for
he holds it as a maxim that power can only be supported by
force, that the people have no idea of justice, and are not
to be governed but by coercion." Narrative of two Mahometan
travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe Renaudot
in 1718.

Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
situation has undergone no change. The bamboo still reigns
in China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most
trivial fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the
people. The Jesuits may tell us that this is the best
governed country in the world,