Reason, the interest of religion (which particularly depends on the respect its ministers inspire), an express law of the Divinity, the example of the legislature of the Christians and most of the popes, a precept of the constitutions of the apostles, the general opinion of the primitive Church and of all the pontiffs, and the decision of two councils, are the grounds on which the obligation, which the Christian clergy are under of wearing long beards, is supported. What is there to oppose against so many respectable authorities? The fashion? A heathen emperor opposed, to those who reproached him with not shaving his chin, the austerity of his manners, and replied: _I won’t cast sheep’s eyes around me, embellish my phyz by making my mind hideous, and, in order to become agreeable, cease to be a philosopher. Besides: fortunately, I neither like to give nor receive kisses._[98] Footnote 98: The _Mysopogon_ of the emperor Julian. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. X. _Of the PEOPLE that WEAR BEARDS._ THE Capuchins, Carthusians, all the Portuguese monks, the Russian clergy and peasants, all the priests of the Greek Church, the German Jews, and the Anabaptists, are the only ones that wear beards in Europe. Most of the inhabitants of Asia wear whiskers or beards more or less long according to their age. All the followers of the law of Mahomet wear whiskers ’till they are forty, when they let their beards grow out, and preserve them afterwards all their lives.[99] Footnote 99: It is in Turkey, where the dignity of a long beard is of the first importance. All the north part of Africa is inhabited by bearded people. Nature has denied a beard to the different nations of blacks who inhabit the interior and but little known parts of that quarter of the world. In most of the islands of the Pacific ocean, the men preserve their beards, and some of them stain them different colours. The author of _Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains_, doctor Robertson in his _History of America_, and many other respectable writers, maintain that all the original natives of America have absolutely no hair on their chins; they except only the Esquimaux, (the inhabitants of North America,) who wear beards, and are unlike the natives of the other parts.[100] However, captain Cook says, that the want of beard in some of the American nations, proceeds less from a defect of nature than their custom of plucking them out by the roots to a greater or less degree: this he observed at Nootka, in his third voyage round the world: all the old men he saw on the west coast of America wore thick, bushy beards, but which were sleeked in the same manner as their hair generally is. Footnote 100: