Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Essay Upon National Character, Vol. 2 of 2: Being an Inquiry Into Some of the Principal Causes Which Contribute to Form and Modify the Characters of Nations in the State of Civilisation
Part I. On the Causes which develop and modify Industry among Nations.
The state of literature, of science, of the fine arts, is gene rally considered as the most direct standard by which intel lect can be measured, and in cultivated individuals this may be held as sufficiently correct; but large bodies of men must beexamined in more complicated points of view, and the relations in which the members of a community stand toward each other, are juster measures of the understanding of nations. Thus government forms a more leading feature in national character and intellect than mathematics, poetry, or painting; and a well-constituted empire presents a larger phalanx of well-combined force, than one which swarms with artists and astronomers.
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