general notions that lying, thieving, idleness, and licentiousness are
bad; and that truth, honesty, industry, and sobriety are good; and for
common purposes, such an one may be trusted to pronounce what is
industry and what idleness; what is licentiousness and what sobriety.
But vague notions, home prepossessions, even on these great points of
morals, are not sufficient, in the eyes of an enlightened traveller, to
warrant decisions on the moral state of nations who are reared under a
wide diversity of circumstances. The true liberality which alone is
worthy to contemplate all the nations of the earth, does not draw a
broad line through the midst of human conduct, declaring all that falls
on the one side vice, and all on the other virtue; such a liberality
knows that actions and habits do not always carry their moral impress
visibly to all eyes, and that the character of very many must be
determined by a cautious application of a few deep principles. Is the
Shaker of New England a good judge of the morals and manners of the Arab
of the Desert? What sort of a verdict would the shrewdest gipsy pass
upon the monk of La Trappe? What would the Scotch peasant think of the
magical practices of Egypt? or the Russian soldier of a meeting of
electors in the United States? The ideas of right and wrong in the minds
of these people are not of the enlarged kind which would enable them to
judge persons in situations the most opposite to their own. 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.

The enlightened traveller, if he explore only one country, carries in
his mind the image of all; for, only in its relation to the whole of the
race can any one people be judged. Almost without exaggeration, he may
be said to see what the rhapsodist in Volney saw.

"There, from above the atmosphere, looking down upon the earth I had
quitted, I beheld a scene entirely new. Under my feet, floating in empty
space, a globe similar to that of the moon, but less luminous, presented
to me one of its faces.... 'What!' exclaimed I, 'is that the earth which
is inhabited by human beings?'"[B]

The differences are, that, instead of "one of its faces," the moralist
would see the whole of the earth in one contemplation; and that, instead
of a nebulous expanse here, and a brown or grey speck there,--continents,
s