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CHAP. IX.: Of the Vanity and Pride of Nations.
VANITY is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this, we need only represent, on the one hand, the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, as laziness, poverty, a total neglect of every thing; in fine, the destruction of the nations which have happened to fall under their government as well as of their own. Laziness†680 is the effect of pride; labour a consequence of vanity: the pride of a Spaniard leads him to decline labour; the vanity of a Frenchman to work better than others.
All lazy nations are grave: for those who do not labour regard themselves as the sovereigns of those who do.
If we search amongst all nations, we shall find, that, for the most part, gravity, pride, and indolence, go hand in hand.
The people of Achim†681 are proud and lazy; those who have no slaves hire one, if it be only to carry a quart of rice a hundred paces; they would be dishonoured if they carried it themselves.
In many places, people let their nails grow, that all may see they do not work.
Women, in the Indies†682, believe it shameful for them to learn to read: this is, they say, the business of their slaves, who sing their spiritual songs in the temples of their pagods. In one tribe they do not spin; in another they make nothing but baskets and mats; they are not even to pound rice; and in others they must not go to fetch water. These rules are established by pride; and the same passion makes them followed. There is no necessity for mentioning that the moral qualities, according as they are blended with others, are productive of different effects: thus pride, joined to a vast ambition and notions of grandeur, produced such effects among the Romans as are known to all the world.