"There is, I think, no one who would prefer the state of a nation, in which there was much intelligence, but some free thinkers, to that of a nation ignorant and ready to believe whatever might be taught it, or which, at least, would show no sign of doubting any of the received opinions. For knowledge never fails to produce much of virtue, in the minds of a large part of those who receive it, even though there be some who make an ill use of it. But Ignorance is never seen to give birth to any thing but barbarism and vice, in all such as dwell contentedly under her darkness. It would, for example, be nothing less than madness, to prefer or to compare the condition in which the Muscovites and some other nations are, as respects Religion and Virtue, to that of the English or Hollanders; under the pretext that there are, among the two latter nations, some free thinkers, and that the Muscovites and those who resemble them doubt of nothing." The whole of this piece, indeed, is excellent, and full of candor, charity and sense, as to the temper and the principles of those who are forever striving to send into banishment, or shut up in prisons, or compel into eternal hypocrisy, all such opinions as have the misfortune to differ with their own. _Friendships_.--There are people whose friendship is very like the Santee Canal in South Carolina: that is to say, its repairs cost more than the fee simple is worth. _Benefits_.--There are many which must ever be their own reward, great or small. Others are positively dangerous. That subtle courtier, Philip de Comines, declares, that it is exceedingly imprudent to do your prince services for which a fit recompense is not easily found:[1] and Tacitus avers that obligations too deep are sure to turn to hatred.[2] Seneca pursues the matter yet further, and insists that he, whom your excessive services have thus driven to ingratitude, presently begins to desire to escape the shame of such favors, by {357} putting out of the world their author.[3] Cicero, too, is clearly of opinion, that enmity is the sure consequence of kindness carried to the extreme.[4] [Footnote 1: "Il se fault bien garder de faire tant de services à son maistre, qu'on l'empesche d'en trouver la juste recompense."--_Memoires_.] [Footnote 2: "Beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse: ubi multum antivenere, pro gratiâ odium redditur."] [Footnote 3: "Nam qui putat esse turpe non reddere, non vult esse cui reddat."] [Footnote 4: "Qui si non putat satisfacere, amicus esse nullo modo potest."] _Heroes_.--Marshal de Saxe is accustomed to get the credit of a very clever saying, "that no man seems a hero to his own valet de chambre." Now, not to speak of the scriptural apothegm, "that a prophet has no honor in his own country," the following passage from Montaigne will be found to contain precisely the Marshal's idea.