The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in
morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed
to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful
in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so
that among us it would be little esteemed. And as to ideas, entities,
abstractions, and transcendentals,[80] I could never drive the least
conception into their heads.
No law of that country must exceed in words the number of letters in
their alphabet, which consists only in two-and-twenty. But indeed few of
them extend even to that length. They are expressed in the most plain
and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial[81] enough to
discover above one interpretation; and to write a comment upon any law
is a capital crime. As to the decision of civil causes, or proceedings
against criminals, their precedents are so few, that they have little
reason to boast of any extraordinary skill in either.
They have had the art of printing, as well as the Chinese, time out of
mind: but their libraries are not very large; for that of the king,
which is reckoned the largest, doth not amount to above a thousand
volumes, placed in a gallery of twelve hundred feet long, from whence I
had liberty to borrow what books I pleased.
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