“Pilgrimage,” said Imlac, “like many other acts of piety, may be reasonable or superstitious, according to the principles upon which it is performed.  Long journeys, in search of truth, are not commanded.  Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought.  Change of place is no natural cause of the increase of piety, for it inevitably produces dissipation of mind.  Yet, since men go every day to view the fields where great actions have been performed, and return with stronger impressions of the event, curiosity of the same kind may naturally dispose us to view that country whence our religion had its beginning; and, I believe, no man surveys those awful scenes without some confirmation of holy resolutions.  That the supreme being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another, is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner, is an opinion which hourly experience will justify[a].  He who supposes that his vices may be more successfully combated in Palestine, will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned, dishonours, at once, his reason and religion.”

“These,” said the prince, “are European distinctions.  I will consider them another time.  What have you found to be the effect of knowledge?  Are those nations happier than we?”

“There is so much infelicity,” said the poet, “in the world, that scarce any man has leisure, from his own distresses, to estimate the comparative happiness of others.  Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its ideas.  Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced; it is a vacuity, in which the soul sits motionless and torpid, for want of attraction; and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget.  I am, therefore, inclined to conclude, that, if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy, as our minds take a wider range.

“In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we shall find many advantages on the side of the Europeans.  They cure wounds and diseases, with which we languish and perish.  We suffer inclemencies of weather, which they can obviate.  They have engines for the despatch of many laborious works, which we must perform by manual industry.  There is such communication between distant places, that one friend can hardly be said to be absent from another.  Their policy removes all publick inconveniencies:  they have roads cut through their mountains, and bridges laid upon their rivers.  And, if we descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are more commodious, and their possessions are more secure.”

“They are surely happy,” said the prince, “who have all these conveniencies, of which I envy none so much as the facility with which separated friends interchange their thoughts.”