A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians,
or the Montenegrins, with no knowledge of places but from the maps,
would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.
Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to
their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot. In
geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without
going from home.
It is not with this department of knowledge, as with the arts of poetry,
music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst.
But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the
last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of
care.
One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:
your fool of a neighbor, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly
reproaching you with not thinking as they think in Rue St. Jacques.
"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our
opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the Abbé Petit-pied. The whole
universe has received our truths; they reign in the Faubourg St. Honoré,
at Chaillot and at Étampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map
of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India,
Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman
Empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north
of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greater part of the
Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short make them observe, in the four
great divisions of the earth, and in the fifth, which is as little known
as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either
never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them
in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to Rue St.
Jacques.
You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much
farther than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so
universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the
lash, knew no more of them than he did.
They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that
the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the
world.
GLORY--GLORIOUS.
SECTION I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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