Book XIX.
Chap. 16.manners, and customs: the reason is, their manners represent their laws, and their customs their manners.
The principal object which the legislators of China had in view, was to make the people live in peace and tranquillity. They would have people filled with a veneration for one another, that each should be every moment sensible how greatly he was indebted to others, and that there was not a subject who did not in some degree depend on another subject. They therefore gave rules of . the most extensive civility.
Thus the inhabitants of the[1] villages of China, observe amongst themselves the same ceremonies, as those observed by persons of an exalted station: a very proper method of inspiring mild and gentle dispositions, ot maintaining peace and good order amongst the people, and of banishing all the vices which spring from an asperity or temper. In effect, would not the freeing them from the rules of civility, be to search out a method for them to indulge their faults at ease?
Civility is in this respect of more value than politeness. Politeness slatters the vices of others, and civility prevents ours from being brought to light. It is a barrier which men have placed in themselves to prevent the corruption of each other.
Lycurgus, whose institutions were severe, had no regard to civility, in forming the external behaviour: he had a view to that warlike spirit which he would fain give to his people. A people who were ever correcting, or ever corrected, always instructing, or always instructed, endued with equal
- ↑ See Du Halde.
