Among the moderns, in pursuit of happiness, some study only to multiply their physical enjoyments; and limited to gross sensations, differ little from brutes, except in discoursing about what they eat. Others, higher in the scale of thought, cultivate the pleasures of literature and the fine arts. But disciplining but a single class of their powers, with a view to distinguish themselves from the vulgar, they are not always more happy. True philosophy is chiefly conversant about that kind of acquisition, which preëminently constitutes the rational man, forms his reason, and places him, as a master, in the midst of an unreflecting world surrounded by children full of ignorance and fatuity. LETTER VIII. OF INDEPENDENCE. We distinguish many kinds of liberty. That which we owe to equal laws, without being indispensable to a philosopher, renders the attainment of happiness more easy to him. However men differ in their political opinions, they all have an instinctive desire to be free. Every one is reluctant and afraid to submit himself to the capricious power of those about him. The thirst of power is only another form of this ardor for independence. With what interest we read in history of those ignorant tribes, unknown to fame, whose liberty and simple manners at once astonish and delight us? When visiting the isles of Greece, where the charm of memory rendered the view of their actual slavery more revolting, what delight the traveller experiences in traversing the little isle of Casos which had never submitted to the Ottoman yoke! He there found the usages of the ancient Greeks, their costume, their beauty and their amiable and elevated natural manner. This isle is but a rock. But its dangerous shores have defended it against tyranny. Associations with the songs of Homer and Hesiod are renewed. Such a picture delights even a people whose manners are refined to a degree tending to depravation. Thus those opulent citizens who find the country a place of exile still decorate their splendid halls with landscapes and flowers. Let not a sensitive and wandering imagination kindle too readily at the recitals of travellers. Were we to transport ourselves to one of those remote points of the earth where felicity is represented to have chosen her asylum, new usages, manners and pleasures, and a foreign people every moment reminding us that we are strangers, would, perhaps, give birth to the most painful regrets. When in our youth we were charmed as we read of the prodigies of Athens and Rome, we uttered the wish that we had been born in those renowned republics. There is little doubt that, had our wish been realized, we should be glad to escape their storms, in exchange for obscurely tranquil days.