persian letters

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
1721
Usbek, one of the traveling Persians, is writing to his friend Mirza in response to Mirza's question: "whether men are made happy by by pleasure, and the satisfaction of the senses, or by the practice of virtue." Usbek answers with a fable--the tale of the Troglodytes.
Letter 11
Usbek to Mirza, at Ispahan
You abandon your own powers of reason in order to try out mine; you condescend to consult me; you believe me capable of instructing you. My dear Mirza, there is one thing that flatters me more than the good opinion which you have formed of me: it is your friendship, to which I owe it.

To comply with your request, it seemed to me that there was no need to use any very abstract arguments. With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such a kind are moral truths. Perhaps this fragment of history will make a deeper impression on you than philosophical subtleties.

There was in Arabia a small nation of people called Troglodytes, descended from those Troglodytes of former times who, if we are to believe the historians, were more like animals than men. Ours were not so deformed as that: they were not hairy like bears, they did not hiss, they had two eyes; but they were so wicked and ferocious that there were no principles of equity or justice among them.

They had a king of foreign origin, who, in an attempt to reform their natural wickedness, treated them with severity; but they conspired against him, killed him, and exterminated all the royal family.
mais